Lead Us Not Into Desecration
by Susan Hillwig
Summary: A DC2 collected story! An encounter with the Lord of Time leaves four Justice Leaguers stranded in the Old West, and if they want to make it back home alive, they're gonna have to rely on some local help. A sequel/prequel to "The Long Road Home".
1. Chapter 1

_Howdy, y'all, and welcome back! It's been 3 years since I inflicted "The Long Road Home" on you poor folk, and in the meantime, I've managed to crank out quite a few other stories for DC2 (all of which can be found here on FF as well), but while that's been a lot of fun, the one place I kept wanting to get back to was a lil' town called Desecration. When I first signed on to write WWQ, one of my stipulations was that, eventually, I could make TLRH (or a story quite close to that) part of DC2 continuity. There's only one problem: due to the nature of the site, everything's basically starting from square one, which means the Justice League story that helped lay the foundation for TLRH didn't happen in their continuity yet. Well, when WWQ started to reach issue #10, I approached the writer for JL and asked if I could borrow the title for a little crossover action, then proceeded to write a DC2-ified version of JLoA#198-199. Before you call shenanigans on me, this is not a direct rip-off of the original story. If you've never read it, trust me, the original is actually rather weak, without a real beginning and an ending that mostly takes place off-panel. So, keeping that in mind, I kept the bare-bones idea of the plot and constructed (I hope) a much stronger story around it, adding in subtle references to TLRH when appropriate -- it was a real trick to write this story in a way that it made sense to anyone who hadn't read the other, but would still mesh for people who had read both. I also had to substitute one of the Leaguers from the original for another: in DC2, Zatanna is not part of the Justice League, so I put Hawkgirl (Kendra Saunders) in her place...and before you continuity hounds start writing me angry emails, the Hawk legacy has a slightly different dynamic in DC2, so I didn't accidentally create a karmic paradox when Hawkgirl meets...well, you'll see._

_Anyways, read on, leave feedback if'n you please, and feel free to check out DC2's other offerings when you're done!_

_**Disclaimer:**__ All characters in this story are owned by DC Comics. Portions of this story are based on events described in, and containing dialogue from, __Justice League of America #198 & 199._

_**Continuity:**__ Originally posted on the DC2 fanfiction site as Justice League #15-16 and Weird Western Quarterly #10. For a link, please click on the homepage listed under my profile._

**LEAD US NOT INTO DESECRATION**

**Part 1**

High noon: that fabled time of day that bespoke of swift justice and swifter death. The two heroes stood shoulder-to-shoulder under the hot Arizona sun, staring down the length of the deserted main street and waiting for their opponents to show themselves. On either side of them, the sagging, sandblasted buildings bore mute witness to the ratcheting tension as the seconds ticked by. Then the wind picked up, stirring the dust in the street even as it cooled the sweat beading on the heroes' brows, and from out of a nearby alley came...a tumbleweed.

"For the love of God," Hawkgirl groaned. "Could this whole thing possibly get any more cliché?"

"I don't know, I kind of like this." Ralph Dibny, the world-famous Elongated Man, smiled and rocked back on his heels. "A change of scenery never hurts."

She groaned once more and leaned against the pike she'd brought along. "It's silly. I feel like I'm indulging somebody's immature male fantasy here."

He considered pointing out that her body-hugging, midriff-baring costume was much more indulging for many men, but he didn't want to get the sharp end of that pike shoved in his eye. Instead, he said, "Well, look at it this way: in a place like this, nobody's gonna care if we knock down any buildings. I'm surprised we don't get sued for all the property damage we..."

As if on cue, a massive, green, troll-like creature bashed its way out of one of the nearby buildings. It snarled in an alien language, then leveled a gun the size of a tree trunk at them. "Now _this_ is more like it!" Hawkgirl said as she spread her wings and took flight to avoid the oncoming laser fire. She tried to lunge at the creature with her weapon, but it let off a salvo of blasts to keep her at bay. "A little help here, Stretch!"

Elongated Man knelt down in the street and flattened himself out, snaking the upper half of his body towards the creature, then wrapping his arms around its legs and yanking it off its feet. The creature grunted, then pointed the gun barrel at Ralph and let loose, but he was already retracting his pliable body to a safe distance. "Missed me!" he taunted, bending himself out of the way of the blasts with ease. "Missed again! Geez, are you even trying anymore?"

As the creature continued its unsuccessful assault, Hawkgirl swooped around behind it and made ready to slash its back wide open with the beak-like hook on her pike. Before she could deliver the blow, however, a flurry of debris from the wrecked building suddenly flew up into her face, courtesy of a miniature tornado -- a thick piece of timber cracked her between the eyes, and she began to fall like a rock. The sight of his companion being struck down momentarily distracted Elongated Man, and he took his eyes off their foe long enough for the creature to draw a bead on him and cut him down. The hero soon crumpled in the middle of the street, his limbs too numb (not to mention slack) to support him.

The creature spared a glance at Hawkgirl laying behind it, then stalked up to Elongated Man, its gun trained directly at his head. It leaned over him, then said in a decidedly non-alien voice, "Game over, Ralphie boy."

"If I could make a fist, I'd slug you," Ralph replied.

The creature laughed, then it began to dissolve, its fearsome visage and awesome weaponry becoming nothing more than sparks of light radiating from Green Lantern's ring. "Don't worry, the stun bolts will wear off in a few minutes," Hal said as he knelt down beside Ralph. "That was a nice move, by the way. I honestly didn't realize what you were doing until I was on my butt. All my attention was on Kendra."

"And all _her_ attention was on _you_...which made my job way too easy." The Flash stopped vibrating at super-speed so that his fellow Justice Leaguers could see him, then zipped over to Hawkgirl's side and offered her a hand. "You going to be okay?" he asked as he helped the young lady to her feet.

"Did you have to smack me in the face like that?" She removed her mask and gingerly probed the bright-red spot forming just above her eyes, saying, "For a second there, I thought you broke my nose."

"Sorry, that one kind of got away from me. Besides, you _knew_ there were two of us -- you should've kept an eye out for my attack."

"I _was_ keeping an eye out."

"Then how did I manage to tag you so easily?" He gestured to the knot on her forehead. "I think you were too busy thinking about skewering Hal in the back. You've got stay aware of your surroundings, even when you're in the middle of attacking the opponent right in front of you."

"Maybe if the surroundings were a little more...I don't know, _modern_..."

"What was that?"

"You heard me." She brushed her short auburn hair back with a sweep of her hand, then put her mask back in place. "When you guys first invited me to join in on this training session, I was under the impression that we'd be practicing our tactics in a realistic environment, not a deleted scene from _3:10 to Yuma_."

"What she means is: she's got a teeny problem with this ghost town you picked out, Barry," Elongated Man said as he stood up, brushing dirt off his costume.

Flash frowned at her. "You are aware that we can't safely practice battle tactics in a populated area, right?"

"Already tried that excuse," Elongated Man said.

"Zip it for a sec, Ralph." The speedster focused all his attention on Hawkgirl. "You should also be aware that we rarely ever get a choice in just where a battle is taking place, which means you've got to be ready to adapt to whatever environment you happen to find yourself in. Sure, the chances of us actually fighting someone in a place exactly like this are slim to none, but it does have a lot in common with a modern locale: narrow streets, easily-damaged structures, and dozens of potential hiding spots, the latter two of which Hal demonstrated very well when he busted out of the old saloon right in front of you."

"Actually, I was surprised you two didn't see me before that," the Green Lantern added. "I figured the light coming off the construct I made would be a dead giveaway."

"Never noticed it," Kendra muttered, then said in a more audible tone, "Okay, I admit it: I let my first impressions of this place blind me a little. But come on...an Old West ghost town? Are you going to tell me that you couldn't find any place better to practice besides this?"

"What are you getting at?" Flash asked.

"Just that I think you guys are still holding onto some childish desire to be cowboys. You know, riding horses and spitting tobacco and twirling pistols...what's the matter, the superhero life isn't exciting enough for you?"

"_Childish_? You think we're being _childish_?" Ralph suddenly clutched at his chest as if he'd been shot, then fell into Hal's arms and cried out in a fake Southern accent, "She got me square, pardner! That lil' filly done cut me down in my prime!" He lolled his head so far over on his rubbery neck that he was looking at Kendra upside-down, then stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth and crossed his eyes.

"You're not exactly helping our case here, 'pardner'," Hal said.

Ralph ignored him and croaked, "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee..."

Barry shook his head. "If you're done playing, how about we get back to practicing, hmm? I'll join Kendra on the defense end this time, so you two go and..." Just then, the comlink built into his mask started beeping, and he turned away from the others slightly. "Flash here. What's up, Diana?"

"Sorry to interrupt you," Wonder Woman replied, "but the satellite monitors are picking up some odd readings not far from your location. I thought you and the others could take a break and check it out."

He gestured to the others to tune in on their own comlinks, then asked, "What sort of readings?"

"_I'm not sure. They just came out of nowhere about ten minutes ago -- no build-up beforehand, and they've been strong and steady since then. It looks like a massive power surge of some kind, but it's coming from the Grand Canyon."_

"Maybe it's one of the tourist resorts near there," Elongated Man said, his joking nature put aside for the moment. "A hotel generator overloading or something."

"_Already checked that, and there's nothing of the sort nearby. It seems to be centered on a remote overlook called Tuweep: no major roads leading to it, no electricity lines, high elevation..."_

"In other words, no reason for that much power to be in that place," Flash finished for her. "You got a visual on the area?"

"Negative, the satellites can't get a good fix. The signal cuts out every time."

"Somebody's hiding something," Hawkgirl said. "Something really big."

"On the edge of a major tourist attraction? Pretty stupid place to be hiding." Green Lantern called up a map of the area with his ring. "Tuweep's about seventy miles due north of here, on the far end of the canyon...shouldn't take long for us to fly out there. Care to scout ahead, Barry?"

"No problem. Meet you there." A cloud of dust trailed behind the speedster as he departed.

Hawkgirl walked over to where she'd dropped her weapon when she fell. The pike had embedded itself in a piece of the debris from the building Green Lantern had burst through -- she looked down at it as she pulled her weapon free, then said, "What sort of person names a place 'Desecration'?"

The other two heroes came up beside her to see what she was talking about. Laying at her feet was a sun-bleached wooden sign, the raised letters still legible despite its age and the damage done to it: _DESECRATION SALOON_.

"Well, if you can have a town in Arizona called 'Tombstone', then why not one called 'Desecration'?" Hal offered, then produced a large green bubble with his ring, enclosing Elongated Man and himself. "And for the record, Kendra, I never played cowboy when I was a kid...I was too busy pretending to be a jet pilot."

The bubble began to ascend, heading north, and Hawkgirl spread her wings and followed after them.

* * *

Flash paced along the lip of the Grand Canyon across from Tuweep, unsure of what to do next. He'd checked over every square inch of land in the area, even the Colorado River running through the canyon itself a mile below him, but nothing looked out of place. _There's definitely something going on here, though_, he said to himself as he tried to raise Wonder Woman back at the Hall of Justice once more, only to be greeted by the pop and hiss of static. That only lasted so long as he was within a half-mile of the area, however: step outside that unseen border, and the signal came back clear as day. He was considering doing just that when he saw his three friends flying in from the south.

"So, what's the word?" Green Lantern asked as they touched down beside Barry.

"It's a definite head-scratcher," he replied, then laid out all the information -- or rather, _lack_ of information -- he'd gathered so far. "Are you guys having the same trouble with your comlinks?"

Hawkgirl nodded. "We checked in with Wonder Woman before we entered this dead area, and she said she's still picking up our locator beacons. So even though we can't communicate with her, she can keep tabs on us."

Approaching the canyon's edge, Elongated Man stretched out his neck and shaded his eyes with his hand, staring across the open expanse. "So that's Tuweep over there? Doesn't seem any different from the rest of the place."

"I wouldn't bet on that." Hal had called up a map of the area again. "According to the scans my ring's doing, there's a mass of energy about fifty feet in diameter sitting right where you're looking. Matter of fact, it almost appears to have a consistent outline, like it's radiating off a solid object, possibly manmade."

"If that's the case, why can't we see anything?" Ralph asked.

"Must be out of phase with us," Hal said, then turned to Barry. "You went over that whole ridge there and nothing happened?"

"Not a thing," he replied. "Maybe whoever's over there can't see us, either."

"Or maybe they're waiting for us to go away." Kendra walked up beside Ralph, looking hard at where the unknown object was supposed to be. "Not that I think we _should_..."

"Well, we're definitely not going to learn anything by standing around here and talking." Training his ring on the ground, Green Lantern directed the emerald energy to make a wide platform beneath all four heroes. "What say we go over there and roll out the welcome wagon for our unseen visitors?" The platform then began to raise off the ground, carrying them over to the northern end of the canyon with ease. Hal steered the platform above the spot that his ring claimed the object sat, and everyone peered down at what appeared to be nothing but an empty plateau.

"This can't be right," Flash said, "I went over this whole area already...see?" He pointed down at his own footprints imprinted in the fine red dust covering the rocky terrain. "If you ring's correct, Lantern, I was standing in the middle of where this energy source is, and I didn't notice a thing. Now I know you said this is out of phase with us, but how are we supposed to find out what's going on if we can't interact with it?"

"I haven't figured that part out yet," Hal muttered, and moved the platform towards another section of the plateau. "I'm going to set us down. Maybe if we confront whatever -- or whoever -- this is directly instead of dancing around it, we can get some answers." While the platform was still descending. however, he heard a strange noise, and turned his head to see a bulge forming in the air, as if something was pushing its way through reality itself. Then the bulge ripped open, and a gunmetal-gray sphere about the size of a basketball emerged. Out of instinct, Hal made the edges of the platform curve up so as to enclose himself and his friends in a sphere of their own, but before he could complete it, the object floating in front of them split open and revealed a row of circular depressions around its middle, all of them emitting a high-pitched whine. Within seconds, all four of the heroes were clutching their heads as an intense wave of pain suddenly ripped through their skulls -- the ring-construct beneath them disintegrated as Green Lantern lost his concentration, and they began to plummet the remaining twenty feet to the plateau. Hawkgirl managed to keep some altitude with her wings and threw her pike at the object in an attempt to skewer it, but the sphere merely bobbed out of the way, and Kendra soon dropped like her friends.

Flash struggled to prop himself up on his hands and knees, trying his best to move at super-speed and get clear of whatever influence the object was exerting over them, but he just couldn't focus enough to do it. He turned his head slowly and saw Elongated Man reaching out towards the sphere, his face contorting as he attempted to stretch his arm across the distance, but he couldn't even manage an inch. Hawkgirl's wings twitched spasmodically in an effort to become airborne once more, and Green Lantern had squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to call forth his ring's power, but it was all for naught.

Another bulge began to form in front of them, much larger than the one that preceded the sphere's entrance. It spread out over the area where the strange power surge was located, then ripped open to reveal what appeared to be a ship of sorts, but not like any ship that existed in the 21st Century: the glossy metallic surface bore neither steering vanes nor visible engines, and it had no landing struts, hovering instead a half-foot above the plateau by unseen means. Then a seam began to appear on the unblemished surface, peeling it away while a sheer plate of metal jutted out from the bottom, until they formed a doorway and gangplank. A bearded figure stood in the doorway, dressed in clothes that suggested a military uniform, but not for any country in particular. "What a glorious sight," the figure said with a laugh as he walked down the gangplank, the blood-red cape he wore billowing out in the dry Arizona wind. "The vaunted Justice League groveling before me, just as you should have done from the beginning. I was hoping to ensnare more of you, but considering what's to come, the rest shall be in your position soon enough." He went over to where Flash lay and pressed his foot down on the speedster's neck. "At least I managed to capture you...I should make you lick my boots for the way you insulted me last time."

"Don't know...who..." he struggled to say.

"Of course you don't know who I am," the figure said. "You haven't even _met_ me yet by this time. None of you have." He stepped back and gave them an elaborate bow. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am the Lord of Time, the greatest enemy of the Justice League, and the one who shall be responsible for your destruction."

"How's...that? By...talking us...to death?" Ralph replied.

"Elongated Man," the Lord of Time snorted. "How I shall enjoy never having to hear your insipid quips again. Why the League asked you to join their ranks is beyond me." The man shook his head, saying, "It makes no difference now. In a few minutes, the world as you know it will be at an end, as I am about to bring forth to your time a threat beyond your imagining." He began to circle about the prone heroes, gesturing to the sky as he talked. "One hundred thirty years ago, a large chunk of anti-matter passed very close to this planet. So close, in fact, that it would have only taken a small change in its course to cause it fall into Earth's gravitational field and explode right above this very spot. I'm sure you're aware of what happens when matter and anti-matter come into contact."

Kendra lifted her head, stammering out, "You...what are you..."

"What am I going to do? Is that what you're asking?" The Lord of Time knelt down in front of Hawkgirl. "It's not so much what I'm _going_ to do as what I've _done_. You see, I've studded the length of the canyon with chrono-stasis generators of my own design, all of them ready to receive the anti-matter energy that will soon be funneling into them from the past. All I have to do now is go back in time, redirect the anti-matter to where I want it, and let the devices safely move all that power into your present." He ran a finger along the curve of Hawkgirl's jaw, saying, "And then, my dear, I will simply ask your government to declare me your ruler, or else I will unleash all that power though the Grand Canyon. Just think of it: an anti-matter explosion tearing through over 217 miles of solid rock...even if the shockwave doesn't manage to aggravate the fault lines over in California, I'm sure the loss of life in the immediate area would be devastating enough."

"Stop you...you won't..."

"How can you stop me? You can't even stand up, thanks to my psionic scrambler." He waved a hand to the sphere still hovering nearby. "Lovely device, isn't it? It disrupts the electrical impulses in the brain, causing anyone within a specified radius to experience severe pain and a marked loss of motor control -- the only way to counter it is with special dampening headgear." He gestured to the helmet he was wearing. "They used it in the mid-22nd Century for crowd control, or at least they did until they found out that prolonged exposure can lead to permanent brain damage...but I do believe you're learning that as we speak, aren't you?" As he stood up, the Lord of Time began pressing buttons on the gauntlet wrapped around his left wrist -- the whine coming from the sphere became even higher in frequency, and he laughed again as the Leaguers screamed in response. "That's the maximum setting," he told them, "with a radius of one mile. Should any of your friends come by to investigate, they'll find themselves just as helpless as you." With a sweep of his cape, he turned and walked back up the gangplank of his ship, pausing in the doorway long enough to tell them, "My only regret is that, once I have defeated you in this timeframe, all our future encounters will cease to exist...which means you'll never know how deep my need for revenge upon you runs."

As the ship began to seal up once more, the sphere continued to send out wave after wave of mind-crippling pulses. Flash, Hawkgirl, and Elongated Man began to slip into unconsciousness from the unending assault, but Green Lantern still struggled against it. While the Lord of Time had been talking, Hal had somehow managed to reestablish the mental connection with his ring -- it was tenuous at best, but the ring had a mind of its own in a way, one that was clutching just as tightly to Hal Jordan as he was to it. Though it took a supreme effort, Hal opened his eyes and focused on the sphere hovering just above them. "D-d-d...d-desss..." he stuttered, then gave up on speaking and thought as hard as he could, _Destroy it!_

A bolt of green energy leapt out of the ring, flying straight at the sphere. Just as when Hawkgirl attacked it earlier, the sphere began to move out of the way, but the energy-bolt homed in on it like a guided missile, changing course right along with the device. Seconds later, the sphere was soon nothing more than shattered metal raining down on the plateau as the energy-bolt connected with its target. _Gotcha, you bastard_, Green Lantern thought as he lay on his side, still unable to get up -- though he'd destroyed the device, the pain it had caused hadn't gone away. "Per'ment damage..." he slurred out, recalling what the Lord of Time had said earlier. "No...no, don' let it be..."

A strange sound reached his ears, and Hal lifted his aching head to see the air around the ship beginning to bulge again. "Not leavin'..." Hal said through gritted teeth, engulfing the ship in an emerald bubble as it started to move through the tear it had made in space-time. Unfortunately, he couldn't overpower the ship's momentum and hold it still, but he refused to give up. Silently instructing the ring to make a second bubble around the unconscious Leaguers, he strengthened his hold on the ship and let it carry all four of them along in its wake, Hal swearing under his breath, "If you go, we follow...no matter what..." But as they passed through the tear and into the currents of Time itself, Hal could feel himself losing consciousness -- his mind and body simply couldn't handle all the pain that had been inflicted upon it, and the strain of what he was doing only hastened the inevitable. The ring continued to function even after Green Lantern passed out, however, carrying out the last orders from its master for as long as it was capable. It held onto both the ship and the heroes as they sped through spacetime, doing what it could to keep them safe, but soon, the forces within the timestream began to wear away at the green energy surrounding them, until it finally dissipated under the strain.

Helpless in their unconscious state, the four heroes drifted away from each other as the currents of Time took hold and dragged each of them under to fates unknown.

* * *

"This is Wonder Woman calling. Is anyone receiving me?" Diana stood at the main console in the monitor room, staring at the screens that lined the walls in front of her. Barely a minute before, the unexplained interference that had enveloped the area known as Tuweep had ceased, allowing the satellites to once again take clear pictures of the Grand Canyon, as well as letting her try to reopen a communications channel with Flash and the others. To her dismay, though, there didn't appear to be anyone there for her to talk to: the satellites showed no one in the vicinity, Justice Leaguer or otherwise, and the locator beacons for each of the Leaguers had winked out the moment the interference vanished. _Don't say "vanished"_, Diana told herself. _This is just another form of interference, that's all. They didn't vanish._

The evidence beaming in on the satellite feed was telling her different, though. From what she could see, the only things that proved someone had even been on Tuweep recently were some faint footprints on the plateau and a scattering of metallic debris...but what that was from, she had no clue. "This is Wonder Woman," she said into the comlink again. "If anyone...anybody at all...can hear my voice, please respond. Barry...Ralph...for Hera's sake, _somebody_ please say _something_."

Silence. Not even a hiss of static, just dead air. _Don't say "dead"_, she told herself, then sagged into the chair behind her, staring at the main console. Amongst all the buttons and switches, there was a single large button nestled in the upper-right corner -- all she had to do was push it, and the comlinks of every Justice League member would receive an emergency alert signal, telling them to assemble at the Hall of Justice immediately. Diana's hand reached up and paused over the button, while her eyes went back to the monitor screens, which revealed nothing new to her.

_One more try,_ she thought, then took a deep breath and said aloud, "This is Wonder Woman calling. Please...where is everybody?"

* * *

A dry riverbed cut its way through the hard Arizona desert. On the occasions when the rains came to this area, it would quickly fill with water from bank to bank, bringing temporary relief to the arid wastes before the ground sucked up every last bit of moisture again. But it had been weeks since this riverbed had seen so much as a single drop, which was unfortunate for the poor fellow laying at the bottom, caked in dust.

Hal Jordan had walked for miles in a daze, not knowing where he was headed, while the hot desert sun beat down on him, pulling sweat out of every pore on his body. The only thing that kept him going was sheer willpower, the one thing the Green Lantern possessed in abundance. It was that same willpower that helped him focus when he saw the riverbed, that gave him the strength to methodically move his exhausted legs in its direction, praying that he would find water there. That willpower finally gave out, along with his legs, not long after he reached it, though he did spend a few minutes digging at the earth in the vain hope that water lay just below the surface.

That was four hours ago, and he hadn't moved since, instead just laying there in a dehydrated stupor. So it was no one's fault but his own when the vultures came around. They merely circled above at first, then a couple got brave and swooped down, hopping over to the Lantern's prone body and taking experimental tugs at his skintight uniform. The motion was enough to rouse him, and he tried to push the birds off, croaking, "Go away." The vultures croaked back in response before resuming their work -- one of them managed to tear a bit of his sleeve off, taking a nip of flesh in the process, and Hal cried out in pain. He balled his right hand into a fist and made to strike the animal. "I said..._go away_!" he yelled hoarsely, but instead of hitting it, an emerald shaft of light shot out of his ring, knocking the bird for a loop and stunning it.

Hal was pretty stunned himself. He stared at his hand, and the ring upon his finger, in wonder. _What did I just do?_ he thought. _Better yet...how did I do it?_ He strained to remember anything that occurred to him before he woke up in the desert, something that would give him a clue as to what this ring was...or these odd clothes he was wearing...or his own name. He could feel a wave of panic rising up in him at the last one: he had no idea who he was, or how he'd come to be in the middle of this wasteland. There was a tiny glimmer of a memory in his mind, an echo of pain ripping through his head, but nothing more. _Was I ...fighting someone? It sounds right, but I just don't know for sure...and if I was fighting someone, where are they now?_

The vultures around him began squawking, then took off for the skies again. Hal couldn't figure out why at first, then he heard what sounded like hoofbeats along the riverbank. Panic taking hold of him again, the Green Lantern propped himself up on his left hand and pointed his ringed fist towards the figure on horseback just coming into view -- he still wasn't sure how he made the light shoot out the first time, but he hoped he could somehow do it again. He thought of how much he'd wanted to smack that bird for nipping him, and tried to direct that feeling at whomever was approaching. Sure enough, the light shot out of the ring once again, barely missing the oncoming figure. Hal heard the horse whinny, followed by a string of curses. _It worked, thank God_, he thought, and began to slump -- he still wasn't sure how he was doing it, but it felt like the act was draining what little strength remained in him.

After a moment, the figure became visible over the side of the bank once again, albeit at a slower pace. Spots were beginning to swim in Hal's vision, but he could make out the outline of the rider well enough. He could also see the massive ivory-handled revolver strapped to the man's right hip, as well as the other one tucked under his belt. The Green Lantern had no clue if this man was the reason for his current predicament, but he wasn't about to let him come any closer just the same. Concentrating as hard as he could, he managed to shoot out another blast of emerald energy, this time nearly knocking the wide-brimmed hat off the man's head. The horse danced a little again, and the cursing resumed. "Ease up, boy! Yuh tryin' tuh get a man killed?" the stranger called out in a heavy Southern accent.

"Move one inch closer, cowboy, and _dead _is just what you'll be!" Hal threw as much weight behind the statement as he could, but in reality, he wasn't sure if he could pull that neat little trick again: the spots were getting worse, and he was beginning to feel like he might pass out from all the exertion. He wasn't about to let the man know that, though, and tried to climb to his feet. It only took a few seconds for him to realize what a stupid move that was in his condition, and he immediately fell back to the ground. The whole time, the man on the horse didn't move a muscle. _Fine, he can turn to stone for all I care, _Hal thought, _just so long as he keeps his distance._ Then he caught sight of movement high above them, and craned his neck to see one of the birds circling overhead swoop down a little closer. Not taking his eyes off the sky, Hal asked, "Those vultures up there...what are they doing?"

"They're waitin' on y'all tuh die, stranger," the man told him after a time. "Looks tuh me like they might not have long tuh wait, either."

"I don't know what you're talking about..." the Green Lantern began to say, still trying to put up a brave front. A moment later, though, his own wasted body called his bluff: it felt like someone flipped a switch inside him, and he sprawled flat on the riverbed once more. He did his best to hold onto consciousness, but he just couldn't get a good enough grip, and his mind began to slide down into cool, dark depths.

The last thing Hal heard before everything went black was the man saying with a chuckle, "Ah'll bet yuh don't."


	2. Chapter 2

**LEAD US NOT INTO DESECRATION**

**Part 2**

The Arizona sky was a crisp, cloudless blue as the man made his way out of the foothills. The grade was too steep for riding, and he'd dismounted so he could safely lead his horse through the patches of mesquite and prickly pear. Despite the slower pace, he figured he could reach the town before sunset, though he was still unsure of what sort of welcome he'd get: many white folk got just as tense at the sight of a solitary Indian as they did around a whole passel of them. He knew that trying to explain that he was really as white as any of them (at least by birth) wouldn't help much either, not once they got a look at his long black hair, tanned complexion, and buckskin clothes. But those sort of prejudices were nothing new to the man many called Scalphunter, and if that was the sort of situation he found himself in once he reached town, he'd deal with it accordingly.

The foothills began to level off, and Scalphunter paused to take a drink from his canteen, then poured some water into his cupped hand so his horse could have a little relief. It was past midday, but the sun was still terribly hot, and both he and his mount were building up a good sweat. "Not much further, my friend," he told the horse in Kiowa, which was the language the man was most comfortable with. "If the people there are good, then we shall rest for a day before moving on." He patted the animal on the neck, and was about to continue on his way when he heard an odd noise -- it seemed to be coming from a spot just up the hill, but he couldn't see anything there. He thought perhaps he was imagining it, but then his horse started whinnying and jerking its head, pulling the reins right out of Scalphunter's hand. As he tried to calm the animal down, he saw something that made him feel just as jittery as his horse: an oblong bubble had begun to form right where the noise was coming from, growing in length until it was nearly six feet across, then it split like a seed pod, ejecting a man onto the hillside. The newcomer tumbled down the steep grade and right past Scalphunter, who had wisely stepped back the moment he saw that the man was headed in his direction, and eventually came to a stop about fifteen feet away from the Kiowa warrior as his momentum ran out.

Scalphunter stared at the newcomer, then back up the hillside at the spot he'd appeared from -- the bubble was gone, as was the noise, and there was no evidence that either phenomenon had even occurred, save for the man now laying quite still nearby. _What just happened here?_ Scalphunter thought. _It's not exactly normal for people to appear out of thin air like that._ He supposed it could have been some form of magic -- he'd had a few dealings in the past with people and events of a supernatural nature -- but if that was the case, was the man who appeared the source of the magic...or a victim of it?

One hand resting on the old cavalry pistol holster attached to his belt, Scalphunter slowly made his way downhill to the newcomer. As he got closer, he saw that the man was wearing nothing but a set of red long-underwear, along with black gloves and boots -- strange choice of attire for the middle of nowhere. Then he noticed that the man's head was twisted so far around that it faced backwards, and the limbs were bent out of shape so badly that the sight made Scalphunter wince. _Must have snapped his neck as he fell,_ he thought as he knelt down beside the man's still form, gazing at the strangely-placid face -- if not for the gruesome injuries that he'd obviously suffered, one might have thought the man was merely asleep.

Then the newcomer let out a groan, startling Scalphunter so badly that he actually jumped back. _Not possible_, he thought. _That man should be dead._ But the man was far from dead, as evidenced by the way he opened his eyes and blinked in the bright sunlight, seemingly unaware that his head was pointed in the wrong direction. As if that wasn't startling enough, the man's arms and legs began to straighten themselves out of their own accord, untangling in slow motion until the only oddity about the newcomer (aside from the clothes) was his backwards head. This fact appeared to take a little longer for the man to notice, and it wasn't until after he'd sat up that he started to reorient it, twisting it around a good two or three times before finally regaining a normal, frontward-facing position. By then, Scalphunter had retreated a few feet away, unsure if the newcomer before him was even human. "Who are you?" he asked the strange man in English, his pistol now drawn just in case. "What are you doing here?"

The man looked up at Scalphunter, registering the Kiowa warrior's presence for the first time, then opened his mouth to speak, but before he got even one word out, the man started clutching his head in pain. Actually, he did more than clutch it: the man's gloved fingers seemed to grow longer, until they encircled his skull. Scalphunter tried to keep his expression neutral as he said, "Whatever you are, I have no qualms about shooting you if you don't start talking."

"J-j-just...just a min..." the man replied, apparently struggling with each word. "Feels like...got kicked in th' head..."

"Considering how you looked a moment ago, I'm not surprised."

The man unwrapped his fingers from around his head, then ran a hand over his face and asked, "Why...why are you pointing a gun at me?"

His tone made Scalphunter pause. True, this man was far from average, but aside from that, he didn't seem to be malicious in any way. Actually, he didn't even appear to have the strength to stand...but appearances could be deceiving. "Until I'm sure of who and what you are," Scalphunter told him, "I feel more comfortable this way. Just don't make any sudden moves towards me, and I promise I won't shoot."

"Suppose...that's fair." He turned his head, taking in the landscape around them. "Mind if I ask...where we are?"

"Arizona Territory, about thirty-odd miles east of Desecration." Scalphunter cocked an eyebrow. "Mind if I ask where _you_ came _from_?"

The newcomer didn't answer, instead rubbing the palms of his hands against his temples and mumbling, "Desecration...I know that name...somewhere..." He frowned. "I can't remember. It's like, it's _there_, but it's foggy...everything's foggy." Then a look of shock came over his features, and he said, "I can't remember _anything_. No name, no place, just _here_. My mind's..." He worked his fingers into his red hair as he stared up at Scalphunter. "What the heck happened to me? _Who am I?_"

The Kiowa warrior stood there silently, unable to offer any sort of answer as the newcomer climbed to his feet, wobbling in place and mumbling about getting himself to a hospital. _He must really be out-of-sorts if he thinks he's going to find a hospital in the middle of this wild country_, Scalphunter thought, and was about to tell him just that when the man's legs started to buckle. Afraid that he might take another tumble down the hillside, Scalphunter holstered his gun and dashed forward to grab hold of the man's arm...which stretched out about three feet while the rest of him continued to fall to the ground. _It's like he's made out of rubber_, he thought.

"What...what'd you do to _my arm_?!?" the man exclaimed, goggling at the sight of his appendage stretched out like red-and-black taffy. "Let go of me!" Scalphunter did as he was told, and the man's arm immediately snapped back to its normal length. Sitting on the ground once more, the man took hold of his right wrist with his left hand and began to bend and twist his arm every which way. "Doesn't even hurt," he wondered aloud, extending his limb until he was cupping his right elbow in his right hand. "Now I _know_ that's physically impossible."

"I know that, and you know that, but your _body _doesn't appear to know that." Scalphunter hunkered down next to the newcomer, saying, "I saw an India rubber-man in a medicine show once...he could contort himself all sorts of ways, but nothing like you seem capable of doing."

"But how am I doing it?" he said as he literally tied his fingers into knots. "It's bizarre, but it also seems...normal. And I think I..." He stopped and shook his head. "Dammit, I _almost _remembered something, but it's gone again. What's wrong with me?"

"Can't say for sure, but it might have something to do with that odd entrance you made. It was like the sky ripped open and spat you out." Scalphunter gestured back up the hill to where it had occurred. "Maybe it's shock, or maybe you took a good blow to the head at some point. Whatever the reason, something tells me that we might not want to stick around here, just in case whoever or whatever chucked you through that rip decides to come back for you."

The man looked up the hill for a moment, then said, "You might be right. I don't remember what happened before I got here, but...it was bad. I mean like 'I think I'm going to die' bad. That much I'm sure of."

"All the more reason to get moving." Scalphunter stood up, saying, "You thought the town I mentioned sounded familiar, and I'm already heading that way, so if you want, I'll escort you there. Maybe the sight of the place will jog your memory."

Pointing to the holstered gun, the man said with a smile, "I guess this means you're a little more comfortable around me now?"

"Comfortable enough, I suppose. You're still an odd fella, rubber-man, so don't expect me to fully put my guard down." He headed back up the slope to fetch his horse, then led it down to where the man was trying to get back on his feet again. "You still look pretty unsteady," Scalphunter told him. "Why don't you climb in the saddle 'til we reach town? The last thing you need is to take another tumble." The man did as he was asked, though it took him a moment to figure out how to mount up, which struck Scalphunter as very strange. _I can accept that he's forgotten who he is, but how do you forget how to ride a horse?_

Once the man was settled in, they continued on down the foothills, Scalphunter leading the horse by the reins like before. After a while, the man asked, "So, what do we do if we get to Desecration and I still don't remember anything?"

"Then we hunker down while I send out a couple of telegrams," Scalphunter replied. "Between your odd abilities and even odder entrance, I get the feeling that something nasty might be headed our way...and if that's the case, I want some friends around to back us up."

* * *

"_Bat Lash!"_

It took the gambler a moment to register that his name was being called as he made his way down the boardwalk. His mind was on the lovely lady he'd be spending the evening with...just as soon as he located one that struck his fancy, of course. The trouble was in picking out only one: Tucson had quite a selection to choose from, which was the reason why he'd decided to stick around for so long. His hot streak at the gambling tables didn't exactly hurt his decision, either.

Lash's name was bellowed again, and he finally stopped to see what all the fuss was about. When he saw the three men elbowing past folk on the boardwalk, however, Lash's feet were in motion once more as he wisely beat a hasty retreat away from the approaching trio. Spotting a nearby alley, the gambler took a quick detour and tried to lose them behind the buildings lining the main street, but the men soon overtook him, one of them grabbing Lash by the back of his vest and slamming him face-first into a wall of the alley. "I want my money back, you perfumed son of a whore," his assailant growled.

"Y'know, most folks start a conversation with 'Hello'," Lash replied in a daze.

The man spun Lash around so they were face-to-face. "I ain't in the mood for no sass. You cheated me outta fifty bucks, and if'n you don't cough it up right now, me and the boys are gonna take it outta your stinkin' hide."

_Should've known this fella was gonna be trouble_, Lash thought to himself, then said to the man, "First off, would you mind not bein' so rough on my attire? This here vest is made of imported Chinese silk...an' hand-crafted by an imported Chinaman, to boot. Secondly, _I never cheat_. I won that money off'n you fair an' square, so if you want to pound somebody's head in, why don't you go find that faro dealer who gave you the bad hand?"

"Wrong answer, nancy-boy." He drove a fist into Lash's gut, and the gambler fell to his knees as he gasped for air, while the men stood over him laughing. "Actually, I changed my mind," his assailant told him. "I'm gonna take back my money _and_ we're gonna beat y'all up anyhow. Sorry in advance for messin' up your fancy duds." He made to slam his bootheel into Lash's head, but the gambler rolled out of the way and managed to stagger to his feet. The other two men rushed forward and tried to grab hold of him, but he slipped away and started running down the alley once again. He hated to act in such a cowardly way, but he always did his best to take the peaceable route in all matters...and he didn't think that these fellas knew the meaning of the word "peaceable".

Doubling back towards the main street, Lash hoped he could throw them off the trail. He was nearly there when somebody came out of nowhere and grabbed hold of him. The gambler cocked his fist, figuring it was one of the men chasing him, then stopped cold when he saw that it was a stranger clad in red longjohns and some sort of hood pulled tight over his head, with little gold wings where his ears should be. "What in the Sam Hill are you made up for?" Lash blurted out.

"That's what I've been wondering," the stranger said, then looked down the alley in the direction Lash had come from. "Is something wrong? Why are you running?"

Before Lash could answer, the three men tore around the corner, shouting, "There he is!" Lash tried to pull away from the stranger and get moving again, but he wouldn't let go. The three men skidded to a stop before them, the lead assailant telling the stranger, "I don't know who you are, mister, but you just saved us a lot of breath."

"And why is that?" he asked them. "Why are you chasing this man?"

"'Cause he's got an ass-whuppin' comin' to him, that's why," one of them said.

The stranger's eyes went from the men to Lash and back again, then he said, "I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. If he's a lawbreaker, then I'll help you take him to the police, but I won't just hand him over so you can pound on him."

"Mister, you ain't got no choice in the matter," the lead assailant said as he stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. But before he could do more than that, the stranger let go of Lash and suddenly became a blur of red lightning, knocking all three of the men flat within seconds.

"Still interested in that ass-whuppin'?" the stranger asked as he stood over them, hands balled into fists. The three men soon made it clear that they weren't by scrambling to their feet and taking off. Meanwhile, Lash was slowly backing away in the other direction, unsure of whether or not the stranger would turn on him next. The gambler hadn't gotten more than six feet away when the stranger zipped up beside him in the blink of an eye, saying, "I'm gonna presume from their attitude that you're actually an innocent party in all this?"

"All's I did was have a run of good luck in the gamblin' hall, which those gentlemen couldn't appreciate." Despite the truth of the statement, Lash's voice was trembling -- the incredible speed this individual possessed was unnerving him terribly. "Thanks for helpin' me out of that jam, mister. You didn't have to stick your neck out like that, but I'm grateful all the same."

"It's all part of the job."

"It's your job to hang out in back alleys an' wait for good-lookin' idiots like me to run by? Can't imagine that it pays well."

"No, I didn't mean it was literally my job...or maybe I did...I don't know." The stranger closed his eyes and began to rub at his temple. "To be perfectly honest, I don't know much of anything at the moment: my own name, why I'm wearing these clothes, how I can move so fast...I've been pretty confused ever since I woke up in the desert north of here." He sighed and looked at Lash. "I was all alone, without so much as a canteen on me...I figured for sure I was going to die out there, but I started walking anyways. Then after a few minutes, I just got this urge to run...and the next thing I knew, I'd cleared well over a hundred miles in about two seconds."

"You...you've got to be joshin' me! _Nothin' _can move that fast!" But then again, Lash had seen the stranger move awful damn quick just moments before. _This is too much, _the gambler thought, and began to pace in the alley. "Alright, let me get this straight: You woke up in the desert in your longjohns, with no water, no supplies, an' no memory...an' you just up an' _ran _all the way from there to Tucson?"

"Is that where I am? I only stopped here because it was the first town I came across." He cast a glance up to where the alley connected with the main street. "Unfortunately, I've been having to lay low ever since I got here. I can't exactly blend in with this outfit."

"Ain't it the truth? Lucky for you, I believe in paying back those who've done me a good turn." He flashed the stranger a grin and hitched a thumb towards the main street, saying, "I reckon I might have some spare clothes back in my hotel room that'll fit you. An' if I don't, we'll head on down to the mercantile an' scrounge up something that does. In the meantime, y'all might want of pull off that fancy hood so's you don't get _too_ many stares your way."

The stranger did as Lash advised, and the two of them headed over to the hotel. They did indeed get a few stares as they made their way down the main street, but Lash merely held his head high and acted as if nothing was amiss, and the stranger tried to do the same. When they entered the hotel lobby, the manager at the front desk did a double-take. "What's with your friend there, Mr. Lash?" the manager asked him. "I've heard of losing your shirt in a card game, but it looks like this here fella's been stripped clean."

Lash leaned against the desk and said, "Don't you know? That there's the latest Paris fashion." He waved a hand at the stranger, who was standing in the middle of the lobby looking about. "Pretty soon, every man in the States in gonna be struttin' around in his longjohns like that."

"If you say so, Mr. Lash. Personally, I'm more of a traditional sort." He turned to the wall behind the desk and pulled a piece of paper out a small cubbyhole marked with Lash's room number. "By the by, a telegram was just dropped off for you."

The gambler took the paper and read it over, then glanced up at the stranger, now standing before a mirror hanging on the wall of the lobby and looking hard at himself. "What are the odds of this?" Lash said under his breath. "Not the sort I'd want to bet on, that's for sure." He read it one more time before walking over to the stranger.

"I barely recognize myself," he said as Lash came up behind him. He kept brushing a hand through his short blond hair, as if making sure that it was really his. "I know the face, but I don't think of it as me. It's more like...somebody I met a long time ago." He turned to Lash. "Does that make any sense?"

"I'm beginning to think that the world's run short on sense all of the sudden." He held up the telegram, saying, "An old friend of mine just sent me a message. Seems he also ran into an unusual fella today, only this one's made outta rubber, plus he dropped outta the clear blue sky. To top it off, this other fella's lost most of his memory too, an' what he _does_ remember ain't exactly puttin' my friend at ease."

The stranger took the telegram out of Lash's hand and read it for himself. "The place your friend sent this from...Desecration, is it? Where is that?"

"Haven't the foggiest notion." Lash looked over at the manager and said, "Hey, Gerry! Y'all ever hear of anyplace called Desecration before?"

"There used to be a mining town called that about two hundred miles north of here," the manager replied, "but I think it went bust a couple years back."

"'Bout two hundred miles north, eh?" The gambler turned to his new companion. "So tell me again: which direction did you come from when you did all that runnin'?"

The stranger's eyes widened. "Do you really think that what happened to me also happened to this guy your friend met?"

"Well, if it didn't, then this is all one hell of a coincidence." Lash tucked the telegram inside his vest, saying, "Looks like we'll be makin' a little trip up north. But first, let's get you some proper clothes, then we'll hop on over to the depot an' see if they've got any trains headed near Desecration. It'll probably take us a day or so to get there, but..."

"Who needs a train?" the stranger said, and pulled that funny hood of his back into place. "Just point me in the right direction, and I'll have us there in no time flat."

"What are you...hey, put me down!" Lash squirmed about as the stranger scooped the gambler up into his arms. "What do you think you're doin'?"

"Saving you money on train fare." Seconds later, the stranger was speeding north out of Tucson as Bat Lash hollered, one arm pinning his hat to his head while the other was locked in fear around the speedster's neck.

* * *

The town of Desecration was dying. Looking at it now, it was hard to imagine that, only five years before, it had been a vibrant and prosperous place, with money pouring in every day from the nearby copper mine. But then came the day when every last scrap of ore had been ferreted out of the earth there, and the mine closed, taking with it Desecration's very reason for existence. Those who had the means to do so soon packed up their wagons and moved on, with only the ones who were too destitute or too stubborn remaining behind to watch their town wither under the blazing Arizona sun.

A few people still came into Desecration, although not in the droves that they once did. Some were outlaws who preferred places like this, free of lawmen and crowds. Others were simply wanderers, glad to find even a small oasis that could grant them respite from the parched land surrounding them. No matter who they were, however, nearly all of them gravitated at some point or another to the Desecration Saloon, one of the few places still open for business in this lonely town. As dusk began to settle over the town, the saloon had a decent compliment of customers, nearly all of them men. The only female in the entire place was a young lady standing at the bar, her slim figure clad in dusty chambray and denim, and her flaming-red hair partly hidden by a slouch hat. Her given name was Kate Manser, but because of her hair, some folks called her Cinnamon. She didn't like the nickname, and would only allow a handful of people to actually call her that, none of whom were currently present in the saloon. Not in the mood for company anyways, Kate sipped her whiskey and kept one ear cocked for anyone approaching behind her -- in the past, her presence in such a masculine establishment sometimes led to uninvited gropes or other lecherous advances. Nothing of the sort had occurred yet since she'd arrived in town, but she was still wary.

Kate had finished her drink and was debating about ordering another when she heard footsteps near the entrance, followed by wolf-whistles and a man saying, "Would you take a gander at that over there?" The young woman set her jaw and let a hand creep down to the pistol strapped to her hip -- she wasn't going to shoot the pigs just yet, only scare them -- then turned around to see that she'd been sorely mistaken. The comments hadn't come from new patrons entering the saloon, but from a group of men sitting near the doorway...and the object of their affection that had just walked through said door was certainly a sight to behold. It was a woman, to be sure, but a woman with _wings_, like an angel fallen to Earth. Instead of the usual heavenly robes, however, this angel wore garments that were so tight that they seemed to be painted on, with her arms and belly exposed for all the men to leer at, and a hawk-headed mask covering most of her face.

"I do believe my prayers have been answered," one of the men at the table said as he got up and walked over to the newcomer, his friends not far behind. "Look at what Heaven has done sent down to me."

"Reckon maybe the Lord sent her down fer all of us," another man said, and ran a grimy hand over her bare arm. "Ain't that right, sugar?"

The woman jerked away, her wings bristling a little as she yelled, "Don't touch me! Please, I just...I don't know where I am, but I know that sign outside. I..."

"Well, if'n you know the sign, then you obviously came into the right place." One of the men wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, but she quickly shoved him off.

During the whole exchange, Kate stood frozen at the bar, staring at the winged woman. Though she'd never seen anyone that looked even remotely like that in her life, the sight of this newcomer gave Kate a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. It made her think of the dreams she'd had as a little girl, dreams of flying...but that had been a long time ago, before her mind had become consumed by darker thoughts, ones that no little girl should ever have to face. Those thoughts were coming to the surface of Kate's mind as the four men circled around the newcomer, taunting and poking -- the poor woman tried to defend herself, but she couldn't block every advance made on her, and it was obvious that the other patrons in the bar were too busy watching this little dance to intervene on her behalf. _But somebody has to do something_, Kate told herself, and before she even realized she was doing it, she'd reached into a pocket hidden in the lining of her vest and pulled out the object within, grasping it delicately between her fingers. This wasn't the purpose that Kate had made it for, but it seemed appropriate for some reason.

"Let's get a look at the rest of ya," one of the men said as he reached for the winged woman's mask, but before he could pull it off, something sank into the back of his hand. He let out a cry and yanked his hand back to find what looked like a sheriff's badge stuck in his flesh, the edges filed razor-sharp. "What in blazes..." he started to say, then stopped when he heard the hammer of a gun click nearby.

"Step away from her," Kate said, a deadly look in her eye as she pointed her gun at them. "If you don't, then I don't have any problem with shootin' the lot of you."

"Little bitch," the man grunted, pulling the badge out of his hand and tossing it at Kate's feet. "I thought you looked like trouble afore, that's why I let ya be...but now you done stepped in it." He reached for his own gun, but the winged woman suddenly drove her fist into the man's jaw. His friends jumped into action at the sight of that, grabbing the newcomer much more roughly than they had previously and doing their best to restrain her. Unfortunately for them, they now had Kate to contend with as well, and one of the men let out a howl when the young woman smashed the butt of her gun against his nose. The newcomer shook the other two men loose, then let Kate take hold of her arm and lead her out of the saloon.

"I don't know who you are, little sister," Kate said to the woman as they headed up the street, "but you certainly picked the wrong town to visit."

"I didn't exactly have a lot of choices," she replied. "I've been flying around for a half-hour, and this place was the first sign of civilization I saw."

Kate stared at the woman anew. "You mean those things really _work_?" she asked, pointing at the wings, then cast a glance behind them to see the four men charging out of the saloon. They all had their guns out now, and the few people on the street began to look for cover. Letting go of the woman's arm, Kate said, "If you're serious, then you'd better take to the skies again before they start shootin'. I'll hold them off 'til you do."

The woman shook her head, saying, "No, I'm not going to leave you like that. Maybe if I get a good grip, I can bring you along." But before she could attempt it, the two ladies saw a ridiculously-long leg slither out of an alley and lay in the street right in front of the men running towards them, all of whom immediately tripped over it and fell flat, cursing up a storm over the matter. As the men attempted to get to their feet again, the leg retracted back into the alley, and the person it was attached to stepped out, followed by a large Indian. A couple of the men brought their guns up and trained them on the newcomers, but the rubber-man stretched his arms out and plucked the weapons right out of their hands while his friend pulled out his own pistol, covering the rest.

"You know, I'm beginning to think coming here wasn't a good idea," the rubber-man said, tossing the confiscated guns into a nearby horse trough. "The locals don't seem very friendly."

"You get used to this sort of treatment after a while," the Indian replied, then turned to the other men. "My advice to you fellas is to do your drinking somewhere else for a while, or at least learn how to be respectful towards ladies."

One of the men growled, "We ain't takin' orders from no goddam Injun."

The two women stepped up beside the Indian and his companion, Kate saying, "Well, if y'all still want to have it out, that's fine by me. At least now the odds are even."

The man stood his ground, glaring at them, then one of the other men laid a hand on his shoulder and said, "Forget it, Roy. These freaks ain't worth the trouble."

Roy didn't move at first, then spat on the ground between himself and the newcomers. "Fine, take the damn bar for the night. Booze is watered down anyhow." He then turned on his heel and followed his drinking buddies down the street.

After they were gone, Kate said to the Indian, "Never thought I'd see the day when a red man would play the hero."

"And it's not often that I see a white woman display such bravery." He offered his hand, saying, "I am called Ke-Woh-No-Tay."

"Kate Manser," she replied, shaking hands, then nodded towards the rubber-man. "So, where'd you pick that fella up?"

"Up in the foothills east of here...and that's a story in itself." He watched as the man in question approached the winged woman -- both of them had strange looks on their faces as they slowly circled each other. "Did your friend happen to come from there as well, Miss Manser?"

Before Kate could reply, the winged woman took hold of the rubber-man's arm, saying, "I know you. I don't know where from, but..."

The rubber-man's eyebrows shot up comically. "Your name...your name's Kendra!" He started laughing, literally wrapping his arms around the woman and lifting her up. "Oh my God, you're Kendra, and I'm...I'm still blanking on my name."

"Give it a little more time, maybe. I can feel it coming back to me, just bits and pieces..." Kendra's eyes widened as she looked at the town around them. "This place shouldn't be in this good of shape."

"You had that feeling too?" He twisted his neck like a corkscrew, saying, "I thought it was just from me being..." He stopped talking and unwound himself from Kendra. "Ralph Dibny! That's my name!" He stretched over to where Scalphunter and Kate were standing and started shaking their hands vigorously. "How you doing? Ralph Dibny, damn glad to meet you!"

"Do you have any idea how unsettlin' that little trick is?" Kate asked.

"Don't know, don't care, I'm just happy to remember who I am!" he giggled.

"That's good," Scalphunter said, "but do you remember how you got here yet?"

Ralph opened his mouth as if to reply, then quickly shut it. "No...no, that part's still gone," he said after a while. "Kendra, do you..."

"Nothing at all," she said. "It's like staring at a blank wall in my mind."

Kate looked from one to the other. "I don't understand. Did you two get bonked on the head and lose your memory?"

"We're still trying to puzzle that part out," Scalphunter told her. "I just hope we can do that before anything worse happens."

"'Worse'?" Kate echoed. "Maybe you'd better fill me in on what you _do_ know before I get in too deep. I've got enough of my own problems, and really don't..."

Before she could finish, a whirlwind suddenly kicked up, blowing dust down the length of the street, and then seemed to circle back towards their little group. When the dust settled, a man in red longjohns was standing before them, holding another man in his arms. "I am never, _ever_ doing that again!" the second man declared as he set his feet on the ground, his legs shaking so much that he fell to his knees. "I don't care how much money you offer me, nothin' is gonna make me want to experience that sort of terror twice in my life!"

Scalphunter stared at the man on the ground. "Lash? Is that you?"

"What's left of me, I reckon." He pulled off his hat, asking, "Is my hair white now? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it was." He glared up at his old partner. "This is the last time I answer a telegram from you."

"You mean you got it already? But I just sent it to Tucson not even twenty minutes ago...how'd you get here so fast?"

"Ask Red over here," Lash replied, jerking a thumb at the speedster behind him as he climbed to his feet. "I was thinkin' about enterin' him in the Kentucky Derby, but he'd probably spook all the horses."

"I'm really sorry about that, Mr. Lash," the man in red told him. "I just got excited at the thought that your friend might be able to help me, and...well..."

"Apology accepted...but I still ain't hitchin' no more rides with you." Finally calm once again, Lash nodded to the others, saying, "Forgive my rudeness, folks. Here I am, babblin' on, an' I ain't properly introduced myself. Bartholomew Aloysius Lash, at your service, but you may call me..."

"Barry!" Kendra and Ralph called out in unison.

"Actually, it's 'Bat'," Lash replied, then saw a flash of red rush past him as the speedster ran over to join his oddly-dressed friends. "Oh, you meant _him_."

"OhmyGodIrememberyouAllIhadtodowaslookatyouanditsnappedbackintoplace," Barry rattled off, then did his best to slow down so he could be understood. "I don't know how, but seeing you guys broke through the amnesia."

"It was the same thing with us," Kendra told him. "One minute there was nothing at all, and the next it just started to flood in. There's still some parts missing, though."

"Yeah, like what the heck happened to us," Ralph added, "and does anybody else get the impression that we're maybe a little far from home?"

As the three of them tried to fill in the gaps for each other, Scalphunter, Kate, and Lash were having a talk of their own. "We should get them off the street," the Kiowa warrior said. "I thought having one character like that rubber-man around was strange enough, but now we've got three. I feel like it's just a matter of time before trouble hits."

Lash nodded. "Could be we're frettin' 'bout nothin', but you've got a point, friend. Like my pappy used to say, 'Better to spend a night in the cellar than to stand out in the yard waitin' for the twister'."

"What exactly are you two gettin' at?" Kate asked. "You keep talkin' like there's something horrible headed straight for us."

"Ke-Woh-No-Tay an' I have each seen more'n our share of odd things, an' while these folks over here seem okay," the gambler said, nodding towards the others, "there's a chance that something not-so-okay could be followin' in their wake." He looked at Scalphunter. "You mentioned Puerta Del Sol in the telegram...you don't really think it's gonna be _that_ bad, do you?"

"If you saw what I did up in the foothills, you wouldn't be asking that question." He was about to describe the phenomenon that preceded the rubber-man's arrival when he heard someone in the other group gasp. Immediately going on alert, Scalphunter asked, "What's wrong?"

Pale behind his mask, Barry said, "We just remembered...before we ended up here, there were _four _of us in our little group. We're still missing one guy."

* * *

He was dreaming of waterfalls, clear and cold, soaking his hair as he stuck his head beneath the unending cascade. He couldn't describe the relief that flooded through him while he let the water run into his open mouth, gulping it down so fast that he almost choked on it. He didn't care, though, just so long as it kept the heat away. He couldn't stand that heat anymore, sapping his strength, his will, his mind...no, the heat hadn't taken his mind, it had been...what had it been? A bearded face, laughing at his pain, _their _pain...then they'd been left to die, but he wouldn't...he'd refused to give up. He'd walked across the sun-baked land even while his body screamed for mercy, and then...and then...

Hal Jordan sat up abruptly, his breath coming in panicked gasps as he tried to figure out where he was. After a moment, he realized he was still down in the dry riverbed he'd collapsed in earlier, only now the sun had disappeared from the sky, and the stars were beginning to come out. He could feel drops of water trickling down his face, and he soon noticed his chest was soaked as well -- looking down, he saw the wet rag which had fallen in his lap when he sat up. Then he saw the blanket laid out beneath him, providing some protection from the bare earth. He was still trying to puzzle it all out when a voice nearby said, "Glad tuh see yo're finally awake. Yuh had me worried."

Bringing his ring hand up, the Green Lantern turned to see a man standing just a few feet away, silhouetted by a campfire. He was dressed in a beat-up, gray uniform jacket with an equally-abused wide-brimmed hat, and a pair of faded blue jeans tucked into cuffed leather boots. While the outfit struck Hal as strange, what really held his attention was the man's face...or rather, what remained of it. The whole right side was heavily scarred, to the point where his right cheek was nothing but a hole -- the firelight playing off of it served only to make the sight more gruesome than it already was. "Who are you?" Hal asked. "What do you want from me?"

"Name's Jonah Hex, an' Ah don't want nothin' from yuh, 'cept fer y'all tuh quit pointin' thet damn fancy ring at me. Yuh almost took muh head off with it earlier, an' Ah didn't really appreciate thet." As he talked, he held up his hands, keeping them clear of the gunbelt he was wearing. Other than that gesture, however, he seemed completely at ease. "So why don't yuh just settle down an' try tuh get some food down yer gullet afore yuh pass out on me again?"

"No way," Hal replied, lot letting the ring waver an inch.

Jonah sighed, then said, "Son, Ah'm doin' muh best tuh be patient with yuh, an' Ah ain't exactly known fer muh patience, so yuh kin imagine how tough this is on me. Now muhself, Ah'm hungry, so Ah'm gonna eat. As fer yerself, yuh got two choices: Y'all kin shoot me in the back when Ah turn around, or y'all kin come over by the fire an' join me in havin' a bite. But afore yuh decide, let me point out thet, if'n Ah wanted yuh dead, Ah sure as Hell wouldn't have bothered with keepin' yuh alive this long."

Despite his own confusion over the situation, Hal had to admit that the man had a point -- it didn't make sense for someone to waste that much water in the middle of the desert on a person they were planning to kill. "You promise...do you promise that you're not going to double-cross me?"

"Ah swear on muh life, Ah ain't gonna do a thing tuh hurt yuh."

Slowly, Hal let his hand drop. "Okay, I'll trust you. But if you try anything..."

"Believe me, Ah ain't gonna risk it," Hex replied, and walked over to the fire. "Now come on over here. Y'all may not believe it, but the desert kin get mighty cold at night. Be damn stupid if'n Ah go tuh all this trouble savin' yer life just tuh have yuh freeze tuh death on me." Hal did as he was told, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders as he sat down near the man, who was removing a small tin pot from the fire -- the water inside was bubbling, and Jonah reached in and plucked out a bit of meat with his bare fingers without hesitation. After tasting it, he filled a tin cup with the pot's contents and handed it to the Green Lantern, saying, "Yuh may not be up fer eatin' just yet, but at least try tuh get the broth down."

Hal examined the pale chunks floating in the cloudy broth. It looked a little like chicken, but he doubted that there were any chickens in the desert. "What is this?"

"If'n Ah tell yuh, y'all might not eat it." He plucked some more meat out of the pot and ate it, and after a moment, Hal followed his lead, taking a few sips of broth, then fishing out some of the mystery meat and giving it a nibble. It definitely wasn't chicken, but it wasn't half-bad, either, plus the smell of it was making him realize how hungry he really was. As Hal polished off his share of the food, Jonah asked him, "So, yuh gonna tell me whut the Hell yo're doin' out here in the middle of nowhere, or are yuh gonna make me guess?"

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Hal said, "I wish I _could_ tell you, but...I can't remember anything. Not my name, or how I got here, or even what this thing is." He held up his ring hand. "I sort of remember fighting someone, but even that's fuzzy."

Jonah stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes upward, muttering, "Yuh just cain't make it easy fer me, kin yuh, Lord?" He looked back at Hal. "Yuh don't remember nothin'? Fine, we'll work around it. First off, tell me 'bout this fight yuh 'sort of' remember."

"Well, I...I'm not too sure if it was really a fight. I remember a lot of pain in my head." He rubbed his fingers against his temple. "And somebody laughing at us..."

"'Us'? There was more'n one of yuh there?"

Hal paused, then said, "Yes...yes, there was. We were all in pain, and this man was laughing, and he said..." He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to bring the memory into focus, but it was no use. "Dammit, it's there, it's _right there_, but I can't _reach_ it!"

"Don't force it too hard, son. When it wants tuh come out, it'll come."

"That's easy for you to say. You don't know what this is like, feeling like your head...your head's just _empty_..."

"As a matter of fact, Ah know exactly whut it's like. Quite a few years back, Ah got caught in a rockslide an' got muh brains scrambled well an' good fer muh trouble. Spent a month or so thinkin' Ah was a preacher-man."

Hal opened one eye and looked at him. "You're kidding."

"God's honest truth."

The Green Lantern laughed in spite of himself. "I don't know you in the least, but I seriously doubt anybody could mistake _you_ for a preacher."

"Well, at the time, Ah wasn't wearing' this fine coat Jefferson Davis gave me," Hex said, plucking at his jacket's lapel. "Ah'd taken it off tuh move incognito, an' just muh luck, thet's when Ah got whacked by the damn rocks." He smiled and shook his head. "Yuh should've seen me tryin' tuh bluff muh way through a Sunday service...why the Lord didn't strike me down right then an' there fer blasphemy, Ah'll never know."

The mental image of this scarred cowboy standing at a church altar reading aloud from the Bible was just too much for Hal, and he started to laugh even harder, with Jonah joining in as well. After a few minutes, Hal got a hold of himself well enough to ask, "So how long did you...heh...how long before you got your memory back?"

"Oh, bits of it were comin' back all the time, but not enough tuh make sense of it. Wasn't 'til a month later thet the whole thing came a-tumblin' back in muh brain, an' when it did, everything was clear as day again."

"Do you think the same thing will happen with me?"

"It might. Reckon all's yuh need is the right thing tuh trigger it." Jonah fell silent for a moment, turning his gaze towards the fire, then said, "Desecration."

"Excuse me?"

"There's supposed tuh be a town north of here called Desecration. Judgin' by the trail yuh left afore yuh passed out here, it looks like yuh came from the north, so..." Hex shrugged. "Just thought maybe if'n yuh heard the name, yuh might recall something."

"No, I..." Hal started to say, then paused. "Wait...yes, I do know it, but...I can see the word, but there's nothing to it. No connection." He gazed at the fire himself, a crease of worry forming on his brow. "How long is this going to last? You said that it took a month before you returned to normal...how can a person live for a _month_ like this? And what if my memory _doesn't_ come back? What then? Do I just spend the rest of my life fumbling around in the dark?" He leaned forward, covering his face with his hands and saying, "God, I can't remember what _year_ this is, or how old I am, or what I even _look_ like. I wouldn't even know myself if I saw a picture..."

Without a word, Jonah got up from the fire and walked over to his horse. He rummaged around inside his saddlebag, then went back to Hal and tapped him on the shoulder. Slowly, the Green Lantern lifted his head to see Jonah standing there, holding a small shaving mirror in front of him -- reflected in the glass was the slightly-sunburned face of a man with tousled brown hair and a green mask covering his eyes. "Yo're a bit of a pretty-boy," the bounty hunter told him, "but yuh seem okay otherwise, so Ah ain't gonna hold thet against yuh. As fer the year, it's 1878. Don't know if'n any of this will help yuh get yer memory back, but at least now yuh know."

Hal took the mirror from him, still staring at the image of himself. "No, it's not bringing anything to mind...but it does make me feel a little better." He looked up at the man, saying, "Thank you, Mr. Hex."

"No thanks needed...an' yuh kin drop the 'Mister Hex' nonsense. Muh friends call me Jonah, an' so long as yo're ridin' with me, y'all kin count on me as yer friend."

"Considering the mess I'm in right now," Hal replied, contemplating the stranger in the mirror once more, "I'm glad I don't have to count you as an enemy."

* * *

_It won't be long now_, the man who called himself the Lord of Time thought as he leaned back in his seat. On the holographic monitors before him were myriad images of the Grand Canyon, which looked nearly the same here in the 19th Century as it would in the 21st, where he'd been only seconds ago. In fact, were it not for the instruments lining the console telling him otherwise, he could have easily believed that he hadn't moved in time at all. The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile as he recalled some of the first trips he'd taken through the timestream, and how disorienting they'd been for him...but that had been a long time ago, before he'd acquired the skill and knowledge that allowed him to mold himself into the Lord of Time. Now, he was a master of all that had ever been and ever would be, and once he had the raw power contained within that chunk of anti-matter under his control, no one would dare challenge that mastery again.

Fingers dancing over the control pad hovering in front of him, the Lord of Time activated the drones he'd need to finish the work necessary to his plan. Within minutes, the drones would begin moving about the walls of the canyon, placing the chrono-stasis generators into position. In the meantime, all he'd have to do is sit and wait for the anti-matter to pass close enough to Earth so that he could alter its path, bringing it down to the surface so that the devices could capture all that energy and transfer it to where he wanted. According to the instruments he had trained on its current location, it should be in range around the same time the sun would be rising over Arizona. _How apropos_, he thought, _that the dawn shall mark the beginning of my reign._

Suddenly, one of the instruments on the control pad began to beep shrilly, and the smile faded from his face. "What is this?" he whispered, then touched a series of buttons. The main holographic display of the canyon was replaced by a larger map of the area and its outlying regions, along with four bright pinpricks of light, three of which were clustered together -- a fifth light occasionally flickered to life as well, but the reading was so faint, it seemed more like a glitch in the program than a true threat. The Lord of Time stroked his beard as he stared at readings scrolling alongside the map, saying, "So, you managed to escape my trap, eh? And you also somehow found a way to follow me back here...quite remarkable, considering my records show that the League has no means of time-travel as of yet. Still, here you are, and luckily, I have my sensors set to constantly monitor for any chronal irregularities in my immediate vicinity. It makes it so much easier for me to wipe out my enemies before they can even get close to me."

He called up his drone inventory once more, and was pleased to see that, even after sending out the ones he needed to complete his plans, he still had a nice compliment in storage. The smile returning, he activated the ones he desired and began uploading them with appropriate files.

* * *

"So," Ralph said, "what are three dazzling urbanites like us doing in a rustic setting like this?" He and the others were sitting around a table near the back of the Desecration Saloon. The owner of the place, expecting more trouble, put up a fuss over their presence at first, but once Bat Lash tossed a decent sum of money at the man (and that was only after Scalphunter had prodded the gambler into doing such), the owner decided to leave them be for now.

"I really wish I knew," Barry replied. "The last thing I can remember with any clarity is helping Hawkgirl to her feet after I accidentally bopped her."

"Is that what this is from?" Kendra said, touching the bruise on her forehead -- both she and Barry had removed their masks, as the notion of "secret identities" seemed rather silly while they were stranded 130 years away from home. "Remind me to kick you in the butt when we get back to our own time."

"I hope you don't have to wait too long to do that," Scalphunter told her. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure where we should begin when it comes to solving your...unique situation."

"'Unique' is puttin' it mildly," Lash added. "In all my days, I never dreamed I'd ever be sittin' in a bar with three folks from the future." He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "Is this sort of thing common where y'all come from?"

"Not exactly," Barry said, "and that's one of the things troubling me about all this: Did we get thrown back in time accidentally, or was this all intentional?"

"Judgin' by what the rubber-man remembers, I'd say intentional." Kate Manser was picking at the wooden tabletop with the pointed edge of the sheriff's badge she'd thrown at Kendra's assailants earlier that night. "From the sound of it, y'all got jumped by somebody...and it must've been a pretty nasty somebody to take out the three of you."

"You mean the four of us," Ralph corrected her. "I know for sure that Green Lantern was still with us when it happened."

Barry sighed and said, "Be nice to know where he is right now." He'd tried to raise Hal on the comlink earlier, then realized that it wouldn't work without a satellite to relay the signal, and they were currently about 80 years away from Sputnik. "Maybe whoever did this to us captured him...or maybe he got away and he's still in our time."

"Or maybe he just hasn't found his way here yet," Kendra said to him. "He may have gone in the opposite direction like you did at first, in which case, he could be sitting in another town right now even more lost than we are."

"Which is why I think we should be out there taking a look around instead of hiding in here." Flash turned his attention to Scalphunter. "I agree with you that we might still be in danger, but we can't ignore the fact that our friend could be out there somewhere in need of our help. Look, I can canvass the immediate area by myself so fast, you'd never even know I'd left."

"Maybe you could," the Kiowa warrior replied, "but considering that none of us -- including you fancy future-folk -- has any idea what we're up against, I think letting you take off into the night on your own is an incredibly stupid move. What do you expect us to do if you don't come back?" He jabbed a finger at the tabletop. "Until the dawn comes, the majority of us will stay in here. We'll take turns walking sentry around town, but only in pairs, and if any trouble comes up, shoot to wound if you can. We won't get very many answers off a corpse." He looked the three Leaguers over and said, "We'll have to rustle up some more guns for you folk. I've got a spare rifle..."

"Sorry, that's not our style," Barry told him.

"Damn shame," Lash said. "With your speed, I reckon you could sling bullets faster'n a Gatling gun." The gambler then flashed a grin at Kendra and Kate, saying, "So, how would you fine ladies like to accompany me on first watch?"

"How would _you_ like to be gelded?" Kate replied as she glared at him, flipping the badge between her fingers.

"Hold that thought, ma'am," Ralph said, his eyes on the doorway. Three men had just walked into the saloon, and the Elongated Man stretched his neck up a few more inches to get a better view of them. "Is it just me, or does something about those guys seem a little off-kilter?"

The others turned their attention towards the door now. Indeed, the oddness of the three men was immediately evident: they all looked exactly alike. Identical shirts, trousers, boots, hats...even their physical features were the same, right down to the haircuts. "Y'know, I've heard of a pair of look-alike gunfighters called the Trigger Twins," Lash offered. "Maybe that's who these fellas are."

"There's _three_ of them, Bat," Scalphunter said.

"Trigger Triplets, then." As the gambler talked, the men turned in unison towards their group and started making a beeline for them. "Whoever they are, they seem to have taken an interest in us."

"Funny, I was prepared for something a lot more dangerous than this," Scalphunter said as he got up from his chair. "They don't even appear to be armed." He stepped in front of the three men, a hand on the butt of his gun, and said to them, "We don't want any trouble. Just tell us who you are, and what you're doing here."

In response, the centermost man lifted his right arm and held his palm up in front of Scalphunter, as if commanding him to halt. The Kiowa warrior couldn't figure out what to make of this, and was about to speak again when he saw a blood-red glow begin to appear in the center of the man's hand, and he suddenly realized how badly he'd misjudged the situation. Before he could even think about moving, Flash came up from behind and pushed him clear, then grabbed the strange man's arm and tried to point it away from the group. As the speedster did so, the red glow shot out of the man's hand and struck the saloon's ceiling, burning a six-inch-wide hole right through it.

"What the Hell was _that_?" Kate said, staring at the charred timbers above them. Before anyone could even attempt an answer, the other two men had raised their hands, their palms turning red now as well. She and the others dove out of the way as two more red beams tore through the table they were just sitting at, destroying it completely. In the midst of all this, the owner and the rest of the saloon's patrons were running for the door in terror -- a simple bar fight was one thing, but this was shaping up to be a nightmare.

Lash and Ralph had ended up under another table, the gambler drawing his gun as he peeked out at their assailants. "Well, at least now we know who we're up against," he quipped. "They look familiar at all, Mr. Dibny?"

"Not in the least. If it wasn't for the laser show, I'd say they were just three average cowboys." He began to snake an arm out towards one standing near them, saying, "Let's see if we can restrain one and get some answers out of him." As Elongated Man made to grab onto the ankle of his target, his hand inexplicably passed right through the man's leg, which seemed to shimmer at his touch. "Holy crap, it's a..." Ralph started to say, but clammed up when the man he'd tried to grab onto caught sight of Ralph's stretched-out arm and turned towards them, taking aim. The two men barely had time to scramble across the floor before their hiding place turned to splinters.

Meanwhile, Flash was still struggling with the one he'd initially tried to restrain, though he had managed to keep the man's arm pointed upwards. The man's other hand, however, was locked tight around Barry's throat, squeezing his windpipe with a shocking amount of strength. As he was debating whether he should vibrate free and risk losing his own hold on the man, Kate came up and smashed a chair across his assailant's back. Unfortunately, it had no effect, aside from the man swaying a little from the impact. That didn't deter her in the least, and she simply jumped on his back and wrapped her arm around the man's neck, attempting to use her own weight to topple him. _It's like I'm wrestling with a statue_, she thought as she delivered a kidney punch to the small of his back, then yelped when her fist hit what felt like solid steel.

"How in blazes do you stop people like this?" Scalphunter said as he reloaded his pistol. He'd taken refuge behind the bar after he had emptied his whole cylinder into one of their assailants, who didn't even flinch at all the lead being tossed his way.

"I don't think they're people," Kendra said, crouching beside him. Like Kate, she'd tried punching out one of them, and had almost broken her hand in the process. "I think we're dealing with robots."

"With _what_?"

"Machines that look and move like men...that's the simplest way to explain it." She paused as a laser blast tore through the bar, punching a hole in the solid oak framework. "You can't just shoot it and expect it to fall over like a regular person."

"Do you have a better idea, then?"

"I might." She glanced up at the wall behind the bar. Hanging above the shelves stocked with liquor bottles were a pair of metal tomahawks -- she couldn't tell whether they'd been actual weapons used by Indians or just gussied-up hatchets made for display purposes, but they looked sturdy enough. "Get ready to lay down some cover fire," she told Scalphunter, "and try to aim for its head, there might be less armor there."

He nodded and, when she gave the word, popped up from behind the bar and trained his gun on the man before him. _Not a man, a machine_, he corrected himself. _But what sort of future are we headed for where you can mistake a machine for a living human being?_ Pushing aside such concerns for the moment, he fired off one shot after another, scarcely able to believe that this "robot" could survive so many bullets to the brainpan. Then Scalphunter saw that deadly arm come up once more, and he ducked down just as another blast tore through the bar, this time mere inches away from his own head. As this was occurring, he caught sight of Hawkgirl swooping up to grab the tomahawks, then twisting around in the air and diving straight at their opponent.

Peering carefully around the side of the bar, Scalphunter watched as Kendra brought her new weapons to bear, sinking the metal blades into either side of their opponent's neck. There was a sound rather like a shriek of pain, and the outline of the man seemed to flicker like a mirage, until the man disappeared completely and left behind something that the Kiowa warrior couldn't even find the words to describe. It had the general shape of a man, with a torso, two arms, and a head, but they could be termed that in only the loosest sense. The head was slim and featureless, save for a large circular lens set in the center, and the arms were spindly, fragile-looking things made of banded metal, with three jointed "fingers" at the end -- the ones on the thing's right hand were folded back to expose a short tube, which Scalphunter supposed was where the deadly beams of light came from. What shocked him the most was the fact that the thing had no legs, the hip sockets instead giving off a strange blue-white light as it hung in the air in front of Kendra, who was pulling the tomahawks free from the sparking wounds she'd inflicted. The thing began to raise its right arm and point it at her, but she brought one of the blades directly down on its shoulder joint, severing it completely, and a final blow to its neck sent the head flying -- the thing continued to hang in the air for a few seconds before the light from its hip sockets went out and it dropped to the floor.

Despite his own problems, Barry saw what Kendra had done, and the revelation about what they were really fighting allowed him to change his tactics. Doing his best to look Kate in the eye, he choked out, "Get...clear..." Kate didn't understand at first why the speedster wanted her to give up, then she saw him begin to vibrate, and felt how it was causing his assailant to shake as well. She let go and backed away, just as Flash increased the vibrations to such an intensity that the robot was starting to come apart at the seams, and within seconds, it was only so much scrap metal at Barry's feet.

The third robot, seeing how its companions had been deactivated, began to sweep its laser around the entire saloon in an effort to wipe out the Leaguers before they could take it down as well. Before it had a chance to hit anyone, however, Barry rushed over and grabbed its right arm, wrenching it free from the rest of the robot at super-speed -- the feedback immediately shorted out the machine's camouflage. The robot then made to strike Flash with its other limb, but Ralph came up behind it and wrapped his own elastic arms around the thing, saying, "Sorry, playtime's over. Gotta put your toys away."

Lash walked up to it slowly, staring at the machine with wonder. "Forgive me if I sound like a country bumpkin, but can somebody tell me what in blazes I'm lookin' at?"

"The Hawkgirl called it a 'robot'...whatever that means," Scalphunter replied.

"It means that it's a very sophisticated machine," Barry said, readjusting his mask, "and that it's even _more_ out of place in 1878 than _we _are." He looked the robot over as it tried to break free of Ralph's constricting limbs. "I don't recognize the design at all. Anybody else got a clue?" he asked his teammates.

"Not a one," Kendra said. "It looks pretty advanced, though, even for our time."

Kate shook her head, saying, "I don't understand. How come they looked like men when they came in here, and now they look like _that_? I mean, they had legs, too..."

"They were using a holographic projection to disguise themselves," Ralph explained. "I caught on to that when I tried to grab this one and my hand passed through his leg...these things must have some sort of built-in anti-gravity, as well."

"English, rubber-man, speak English!" Lash cried in exasperation.

"It's probably better that you don't understand it all, anyways," Barry told him. "Who knows how badly we've messed up the timestream already just by being in this town, and the longer we're here, the worse it's..."

"_Don't worry, Flash,"_ the robot said. _"It will all be over soon. By the dawn, I shall have what I came for, and then I can dispose of you and your friends personally."_

"Good Lord," Scalphunter said. "These things can _talk_, too?"

"No, it's not the robot," Kendra said to him. "It's broadcasting...and I know that voice. I don't know where from, but I'm positive that I've heard it before."

The robot's head turned slightly towards her as the unknown voice said, _"Have you forgotten me already, Hawkgirl? Admittedly, we didn't have much time to get to know each other before we parted, but..."_ There was a pause, then a laugh which sounded terribly familiar to the Leaguers. _"Ah, I should have suspected this! When my sensors picked up your presence in this time, I assumed you followed me here intentionally, but that isn't the case, is it? And thanks to my psionic scrambler, you have no idea who I am or what my plans are! How ironic!"_ The voice began to cackle louder.

Barry grabbed the robot's head in both hands and glared into the lens. "What are you talking about, you bastard? And what did you do to Green Lantern?"

"_Nothing yet, but my drone will reach him soon. Poor little man, all alone out there...he doesn't stand a chance."_

"I may not remember who you are," Barry said, "but if you hurt him, I swear to God you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Do you hear me?"

"_I can hear you just fine...but can you hear this?"_ An electronic tone began to come out of the robot, slowly rising in pitch. At first, the Leaguers thought it was feedback of some sort, but then Ralph and Barry made eye contact, each of them mouthing the same word: "Bomb." A split-second later, Elongated Man unwound himself from around the robot, and Flash grabbed hold of it and raced away from Desecration, towards the busted copper mine just outside town -- the speedster had no idea how powerful the ensuing blast might be, but he hoped that the now-deserted shafts the miners had dug out would be deep enough to contain it. He paused only a moment at the mine's entrance, then threw the robot down into the darkness as hard as he could before taking off again. A few seconds later, an explosion shook the ground, and Barry looked on from a safe distance as clouds of dirt and scraps of timber spewed forth from the mine before the entrance collapsed in on itself.

As the echo of the explosion faded away, Barry scanned the night-shrouded horizon for even the tiniest glimpse of green. "We'll find you, Hal," he said under his breath. "I don't know where you are right now, but we'll find you. Just hang in there."

* * *

Roughly thirty miles south of Desecration, Hal Jordan was sleeping next to a waning campfire, a blanket pulled tight around him. Nearby sat Jonah Hex, who had given up on sleep, and instead was staring at the flickering flames as he attempted to ignore the thoughts that kept bubbling up in the back of his mind. He'd put up a good front for the past few hours, but now that the Green Lantern had nodded off, the need to pretend was gone, and Jonah was free to wrestle with the memories that he'd been trying to repress for over three years. He thought he'd licked the problem a while back, but judging by the way his hands kept shaking, it looked like he still had a ways to go. _Yuh kin deal with this,_ Jonah told himself. _It ain't like it's anything new tuh y'all, it's just...unexpected. Yuh kin deal with this just fine, no fuss at all._ But it was a lie, and he knew it. Loath as he was to admit it, he was going to need some help to get through this.

Getting up from his place at the fire, Jonah went to his horse. The animal stirred at his approach, but Hex laid a hand on it and whispered, "Easy, girl," then pulled open one of the saddlebags. After a moment, he produced a bottle of whiskey, which he'd purchased right before he'd set out on the trail. The seal on it hadn't even been broken yet, and Jonah ran a callused thumb around the mouth of the bottle, debating if he should do so now. And really, it was such an easy thing to do: just yank the cork out, upend the bottle, and let all that booze pour straight down his gullet. Then maybe his hands would stop shaking for a bit, and maybe the old nightmares that still haunted him from time to time would recede back into the dark corners of his mind....and maybe he'd get so drunk that he would decide the Green Lantern wasn't worth all the trouble, and maybe he'd just get on his horse and ride off into the night, consequences be damned...

Jonah gritted his teeth, then strode over to the edge of the dry riverbed and climbed out. He moved a good twenty paces away from the campsite before chucking the bottle out over the desert as far as he could -- it was too dark out to track its flight path, but he heard the sound of shattering glass well enough. _Bad waste of good whiskey,_ he thought with a sigh, then looked up at the stars, the one thing in his life that never seemed to change. "Ah'm keepin' muh promise," Hex said. "It might drive me mad, but Ah'm keepin' it...an' Ah'm gonna do it dead sober, too. Ah ain't sayin' thet Ah won't crawl into a bottle fer a week or two afterward, but 'til this whole mess is done an' over with, Ah swear thet..."

A startled cry came from behind Jonah, and he whirled around, his hands automatically going to his Dragoons. He could see nothing wrong from where he stood, but he soon heard another cry, followed by the sounds of a struggle, and both appeared to be coming from the campsite. Cursing himself for leaving Hal alone, he rushed back to the edge of the riverbed and found an unknown man trying to pin down the Green Lantern. In the firelight, Jonah could see that the newcomer looked rather disheveled, with scraggly locks of blond hair framing his sun-blistered face, and the bounty hunter suddenly had a good idea of who this person was. Training his guns on the man, Jonah boomed out, "Give it up, McAllister! Yuh ain't got a chance of winnin'!"

Though briefly startled by the order, the man quickly threw an arm around Hal's neck, then pulled out a knife and jabbed the tip of it into the Lantern's ribs. "You take a shot at me, and this fella's gonna regret it," McAllister said in a raspy voice.

"Y'all shove thet pig-sticker in him, an' _Ah'll_ shove it up _yer_ ass sideways," Hex growled. "Ah ain't in the mood fer games, so just let him go afore Ah forget muh manners an' splatter yer brains all over muh friend there."

"Tough talk...but something tells me you ain't gonna risk it." He dug the knife in a little deeper, saying, "How 'bout I make you a counter-offer? You put those pistols away, toss all the canteens you got over here, and _then_ I'll let him go."

As the two men stared each other down, Hal's eyes slipped closed in concentration. He hadn't been able to make that strange ring of his work again since he'd fired those pot-shots at Hex, but he needed to try once more if he wanted to get out of this alive. He ignored the voices shouting back and forth, clearing his mind until he was thinking only about the ring and the power contained within it -- he had a vague sense that the ring could do much more than shoot out beams of light, but he had no idea what exactly it was capable of. _Just tell it what you want,_ Hal thought. _That's how it worked before: you wanted to defend yourself, and it reacted accordingly. So tell it what you want now...focus on a specific action...focus..._

A brilliant flash of green suddenly burst forth from the ring, lighting up the landscape with emerald fire. Then it began to coalesce in front of Hal and McAllister into the form of a massive tusked creature carrying what looked like a gun the size of a tree trunk. It leveled the weapon at Hal's attacker and snarled something indecipherable, to which McAllister responded by screaming like a little girl. He shoved the Green Lantern towards the creature, then took off as fast as he could, a wet spot forming on his dusty trousers. Seconds later, the creature faded away as Hal keeled over from the effort.

Jonah slid back down into the riverbed, panic in his eyes as he rushed over to Hal's side. Once he'd assured himself that the Lantern was all right, he took off after McAllister, yelling, "Yuh ain't gonna get far, yuh crazy sonovabitch!" When the fleeing man started to climb out of the riverbed, Hex trained his guns on McAllister's back and made ready to fire. Before he could get off a shot, though, an emerald rope wrapped itself around Hex's wrists and pulled him off his feet. "Whut the Hell..." he started to say, then saw Hal, still sprawled out on the ground, holding the other end of the rope generated by his ring. "Whut's wrong with yuh? The bastard's gonna get away!"

"I'd rather he get away then let you kill him in cold blood," Hal replied, a hint of exhaustion in his voice.

"Ain't nothin' cold about it. Thet owlhoot's killed a bunch of men already...an' in case yuh missed it, he was about ready tuh do yuh in as well. Plus he's been hidin' out here in the desert fer the past week, so Lord knows how many other jaspers he's killed fer water an' supplies durin' thet time. Trust me, he's far from innocent."

"It doesn't matter. You don't have the right to kill whomever you see fit."

"An' y'all ain't got the right tuh tell me how tuh do muh job." Jonah yanked at the rope-construct until it dissolved. "Ah don't rightly know how they handle owlhoots where y'all come from, but 'round here, the best way tuh deal with most of 'em is tuh gun 'em down afore they do any more damage...an' more often than not, Ah'm the only one with enough guts tuh do the deed. Reckon bounty huntin' ain't the most glamorous work, but it's necessary, so while yo're in muh world, y'all mind yer own goddam business." With that, Jonah started after McAllister once more, his ivory-handled Dragoons cocked and ready for action.

Hal got to his feet and followed him, saying, "Hex, you're a menace! And if you think for one second that I'm going to stand by and..." He stopped dead in his tracks as a blood-curdling scream pierced the night. It sounded like McAllister, but this time, it sounded like the scream was borne more out of agony than fear. The Green Lantern looked over at Jonah, who had moved close to the edge of the riverbank and was now peering carefully in the direction the outlaw had run. "What do you see?" Hal asked.

"Not a damn thing, but it smells like a barbeque up there." Hex moved a little further up the bank to get a better view, then froze, saying under his breath, "Holy Hannah..." He brought his weapons to bear once more and started shooting, emptying both guns just seconds before a bright-red streak of light ripped through the night towards him -- Jonah tried to duck back down into the riverbed to avoid it, but it still managed to clip his torso and knock him flat onto the ground.

"Oh my God...Jonah, are you okay?" Hal fell to his knees beside the groaning bounty hunter, trying to figure out what happened. There was a burn mark on Jonah's left side, searing though layers of clothing all the way down to bare flesh -- whatever had hit him was so hot, the shallow wound had immediately cauterized. _What in the world did this?_ Hal thought, then caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to see an ordinary cowboy standing at the edge of the riverbank, regarding the two of them with dead eyes. For the second time that night, Hal asked, "Who are you?"

In answer, the cowboy brought up his right arm, the center of his palm already glowing red, and fired directly at Green Lantern.


	3. Chapter 3

**LEAD US NOT INTO DESECRATION**

**Part 3**

Hal Jordan wasn't having a good day. He'd woken up in the middle of the desert suffering from amnesia, and had spent quite a few hours wandering about before he crossed paths with a man named Jonah Hex, a rough-and-tumble bounty hunter who offered to help the Green Lantern until his memory came back. Despite his best efforts, Hal hadn't made much progress on that yet, and considering the situation he found himself in now, he wasn't sure if he'd live long enough to ever resolve his problem.

"Who are you?" Hal asked the stranger looking down on him, surprised at the calmness of his own voice: just moments before, this stranger had struck Hex down, and judging by the scream they'd heard earlier, he'd done even worse to the outlaw Hex had been tracking through the desert. Now it appeared that he'd set his sights on Green Lantern. Without a word, the stranger raised his hand, and a bright-red laser beam shot out -- the action was so unexpected that Hal could think of nothing else to do but cross his arms in front of his face. The moment he did so, his ring suddenly sparked to life, encompassing both Hal and the bounty hunter laying next to him in an emerald bubble, which apparently the laser couldn't penetrate.

As Hal stared dumbstruck at the sight, a voice whispered in his ear, plain as day: _{Automatic defenses online. Power levels at 63.82 percent.}_

Confused, Hal looked at Jonah, thinking perhaps he'd been the one to speak, but the bounty hunter seemed more concerned with trying to hold onto consciousness, his teeth gritted as he clutched at the wound on his side. It didn't appear to have been the stranger before them either, who intensified the laser beam in an attempt to burn through the shield surrounding them. Hal thought he'd imagined it, then the voice returned: _{Power levels at 59.5 percent.}_ With each syllable, Hal saw the light emanating from the center of his ring flicker ever so slightly, and he realized where the voice was coming from. "Jesus Christ," he said under his breath. "Jonah, I think this ring's _talking_ to me."

"Lovely," Jonah groaned. "Tell it tuh kill this bastard afore he kills us."

"I can't do that! Weren't you even _listening _to me before?"

"Thet Ah was...but y'all obviously weren't listenin' tuh _me_." Jonah managed to sit up, then his hand shot out quick as a rattlesnake and grabbed hold of Hal's wrist, pointing the ring dead-square at their assailant. "'Round here, yuh gotta gun the owlhoots down afore they do any more damage, an' at the moment, yo're totin' the biggest damn gun in the arsenal."

"But I can't...I _won't_..." As he said the words, he saw that the bubble around them was beginning to weaken under the assault. He tried to concentrate, make the bubble stronger, but just like every other time he'd made the ring do anything, the ability seemed to wax and wane beyond his control. _{Power levels at 56.448 percent,}_ the voice told him now, and Hal was suddenly struck by how familiar it was. He knew the voice, he _knew_ it, and if he could just focus on it for a moment, he might be able to...

"Dammit, boy, Ah ain't gonna die today 'cause yuh cain't find an inch of guts in thet stinkin' green hide of yers!" Jonah screamed, the sweat beading on his brow the only sign of the pain he was fighting to ignore. "This skunk's already turned McAllister into charcoal, an' it looks like he wants tuh do the same tuh _us_! Ah tried shootin' him, but he laughs off bullets, so yo're gonna have tuh use thet goddam ring tuh blow him tuh Hell an' gone, yuh hear me? Yo're gonna doit, or else Ah'm gonna bash yer goddam _skull_ in! Now _do it_, yuh gutless little nancy! _DO IT!_"

Hal tried to block out the order, but Hex's barking voice drilled straight into his brain, bringing forth thoughts that he didn't want to give form...but that was exactly what Hal did, a scream of his own tearing out of his throat as a massive bolt of green energy leapt out of the ring and blew a hole through the stranger's midsection. Shrapnel rained down upon them, revealing to the stunned Green Lantern the stranger's true mechanical nature -- Hal was still angry at Jonah for forcing him to destroy what he'd previously thought to be a living person, but was thankful that he hadn't actually done so. The bounty hunter, meanwhile, took in the metallic debris laying around them and muttered with a note of satisfaction, "Gotcha, yuh bastard."

Though he had no way of knowing it, Jonah's offhand remark, coupled with the shocking events of the past few minutes, set off something deep in Hal's subconscious -- just a tiny spark that finally began to burn through the amnesiac fog Green Lantern's mind had been shrouded in for almost twelve hours. It was subtle at first, only a vague recollection of himself using that phrase before in a similar situation, but it soon began to grow at an exponential rate. _There was a sphere_, he thought, _a metal sphere hanging in the air, and it was shooting at me, same as this thing I just destroyed had been doing._ Hal shook his head -- no, that wasn't right, but it was close -- then he climbed to his feet, staring blankly before him as the memory began to coalesce into something more tangible: a sphere appearing out of nowhere, emitting a high-pitched whine that crippled himself and his friends, and then a man standing over them, gloating about how he was going to destroy them all. _But then he left, and I told the ring to destroy the sphere, and when that was done, I made the ring latch onto the man's ship...but who is he?_ After a moment, it came to him, and he said aloud, "The Lord of Time."

"Come again?" Jonah asked. He'd been watching Hal closely the whole time, unsure if the apparent trance the man had fallen into was good or bad.

"I remember who did this to me." Green Lantern continued to stare straight ahead as he spoke. "I remember what happened before I got stuck out here in the desert. I remember..." He paused, then brought up his right hand and gazed upon the ring, which seemed to be glowing even brighter now. "I remember my name...my God, I remember who I am again!" Letting out a whoop of joy, Hal shot straight up into the night sky, the emerald-green nimbus surrounding him lighting up the desert like a flare. He zipped and dove about in various aerial maneuvers for a minute, laughing all the while, then got a hold of himself again and came back down to earth.

Jonah was on his feet now as well, holding his side as he watched the Lantern settle down next to him once more. "Yuh get it all outta yer system?" he asked, as if he saw people fly around in the air all the time.

"I couldn't help myself...I'm just so happy to feel like _me_ again." Hal grinned. "It was just like you said it would be: something got triggered in my brain, and then it all came back. Well, maybe not all of it, but the real important thing is the mental block that was keeping me from using my ring properly is gone now." He held up his ring hand, saying, "Whatever I can't remember, it should be able to fill me in on."

"Thet's pretty handy," Hex said, then grunted and pressed his hand tighter over his wound. "Ah don't suppose it kin do anything 'bout this hole in muh side, kin it?"

"Maybe...it's patched me up before, but I've never tried it on another person." Hal pointed the ring at Jonah's wound, and it was soon bathed in green light -- the bounty hunter grimaced as the burned flesh slowly began to heal. After about fifteen seconds, the light disappeared, and though the wound was still there, it looked nowhere near as bad as it had beforehand. "Sorry, but I think that's the most it can do for you," Hal said.

"Better'n nothin'...Ah kin deal with the pain, just so long as it don't go septic on me," Jonah replied. "Now, whut are we gonna do 'bout this 'Lord of Time' jackass?"

"'We'? Forget it, Hex, I can't let you get involved in this any further. This guy isn't some scuzzy outlaw, he's a dangerous man with technology you couldn't even fathom." Hal waved a hand towards the remains of the robot. "Believe me, that's just the tip of the iceberg -- the Lord of Time's got all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. For your own safety, it'd be better if I went this alone." He began to rise off the ground again, his mind already on trying to find his friends, wherever they may be, but before he was more than five feet in the air, Jonah grabbed hold of Hal's ankle and yanked him back down.

"Seems tuh me thet the last time yuh went it alone, yuh damn-near died in the desert," Jonah said plainly when Hal was at his eye level once more. "Now maybe Ah ain't got no fancy-dan ring like yerself, but Ah kin at least watch yer back 'til this whole mess is over an' done with." The unscarred side of his mouth curled up in a smile. "'Sides, Ah might just surprise yuh with a few tricks of muh own."

Hal mulled it over, then said, "I suppose you're right. Okay, until we've taken care of the Lord of Time, you're my backup...but you've got to swear to me that you won't kill anyone, no matter how hairy things get."

"Again with the 'no killin'' nonsense...alright, fine, Ah swear. Yuh gonna make me lay muh hand on a Bible, too?"

Hal smirked, saying, "No, I think I can take you at your word." He used his ring to generate a map of the area, indicating certain points to Jonah. "We're down here, and the Lord of Time is about a hundred miles north of here, in a part of the Grand Canyon called Tuweep...at least, that's where he was when my friends and I ran into him."

"So thet's where we're headed?"

"Not yet. I want to track down my friends first. My ring's scanning the area for the locator beacons in their comlinks -- they're useless in this century for communication, but the beacons should still be sending out a signal."

Seconds later, three spots lit up on the map, and the two men looked at each other in surprise. "Well now, ain't thet convenient?" Jonah said.

"It's nice to catch a break every once in a while." Hal hitched a thumb back towards camp and said, "Saddle up, 'pardner', it's time to hit the trail."

* * *

"Y'know, I've never found the sight of a woman smokin' to be all that appealin'."

"Remind me to never give up the habit, then." Kate Manser took another drag on the cigarette she'd rolled, not even bothering to look at Bat Lash standing in the saloon doorway. "What are you doin' out here, anyhow? I thought you were tryin' to help those two fellas dissect that machine-man."

"I was...but when I mentioned that I'd heard of a man named Edison who'd probably be quite interested in some of the metal guts they was pullin' out of it, they hustled me right out of the room." Kate was sitting on a bench in front of the saloon, and Lash sat down right next to her -- she immediately responded by scooting away from him. "You don't like me much, do you?" Lash asked.

"I don't like the way you _look_ at me. Makes me feel naked."

"I can't help it, I've always had a deep appreciation for the fairer sex." The gambler pulled out his pocket watch. "Been almost an hour now. I wonder if Ke-Woh-No-Tay and that Hawkgirl have found anything yet."

"Would there be anything to find, though? I mean, these things don't even have _feet_, so there won't be any tracks to follow."

"True, but if they did so much as bend a twig on their way into town, Scalphunter will find it. Plus, if that gal's eyes are as good as she claims, she might be able to spot any more trouble comin' our way." He propped his chin on his hand and said, "We probably would've had an even better chance of smokin' these owlhoots out if Johnny and his wife had answered that wire Ke-Woh-No-Tay sent. Arizona's more their area of expertise than any of ours."

"Who's that again?"

"More veterans of Puerta Del Sol...and to top it off, Johnny's a learned man with an interest in strange phenomena, so he'd be real helpful right about now."

"I'm not sure that there's anybody that can help us with this mess...at least not anybody from _this _century." She glanced over her shoulder and through the saloon's plate-glass window. Flash and Elongated Man were bent over one of the tables inside, hoping to discern some clue about their unknown enemy from the various bits of electronics spread out before them. "I'll be honest with you: I like these folks, especially that Hawkgirl, but this future-world that they come from...just the little glimpses I've seen of it make me feel...I don't know...out-of-sorts."

"It does get rather unsettlin' at times, doesn't it?" Lash spared a glance himself, then said, "I just try to take comfort in the fact that I'll most likely be dead before the world reaches that particular future."

"A rather morbid way of lookin' at it, but you make a good point."

"Just speakin' the plain truth."

There was a rustling of wings overhead, and the two of them turned away from the window to see the aforementioned Hawkgirl descending to the street, calling out, "Guys, we found him! We found GL!" She touched down and immediately started running up to the saloon door, but there was no need: Flash was already zipping outside, with Elongated Man following not long after.

"Is he all right?" Barry asked, searching the sky for him. "Where is he?"

"Still a few miles off, with Scalphunter. I flew ahead to round up the rest of you."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Ralph stretched over to the hitching post near the saloon, where three horses were standing by -- they'd prepped the animals before Scalphunter and Hawkgirl headed out, just in case, and it looked like their forward thinking was now paying off. Once Lash, Kate, and Ralph were mounted up, Kendra took to the air and led them south, with Barry racing alongside the horses on foot.

As they closed in, Kate and Lash could see a steady green haze cutting across the dark plain. It soon became clear that the haze was coming off, of all things, an emerald-green horse, upon which sat a rider dressed just as oddly as the other future-folk they'd met. Riding along his left side was Scalphunter, and to his right was a man that Lash was quite surprised to see. "Hey, Hex!" the gambler called out, removing his hat and waving it about. "Ain't you a sight for sore eyes!"

"You _know_ him?" Kate asked.

"Know him? Heck, I saved that man's life on more'n one occasion." Bat brought his horse to a stop and dismounted, as did the others. "Matter of fact, I've been hearin' rumors off an' on the past three years that our Rebel friend here was as dead as Dixie." He walked over to Jonah with a questioning look in his eye and said, "Been hearin' some other odd things 'bout you durin' that time, but you ain't been around to clarify. Mind tellin' me what rock you've been hidin' under?"

"As a matter of fact, Ah _do_ mind, so shut yer ever-runnin' mouth." The bounty hunter turned away from Lash and took in the sight of the other Leaguers for a moment or two. "Ah was expectin' more green longjohns," he said after a time.

"There are others," Hal said, "but right now, this is League business." He gestured to his teammates, saying, "Jonah Hex, let me introduce you to Elongated Man and Flash...and of course, you just met Hawkgirl." Jonah gave each of them a barely perceptible nod.

"And I'm Bartholomew Aloysius Lash, but you can call me Bat." The gambler stepped up to Hal, all smiles. "And in case Ke-Woh-No-Tay didn't inform you, we have a newcomer to both our groups." He started to sweep his hand towards Kate, but Jonah cut him off by walking right past him, taking off his hat as he approached the woman.

"Good tuh see yuh again, Cinnamon," Jonah said quietly.

"Same goes for you," Kate replied. "You're looking better than you did last time. Finally startin' to sleep through the night?"

"Most nights...it comes an' goes. How 'bout yerself? How many yuh got left?"

"Just two. Still got the one I gave you?"

"Thet Ah do." He patted the left side of his coat, over his heart. "Came in right handy over in Blood Creek a few months back."

Lash's face screwed up in obvious annoyance. "Hey, can the two of you quit bein' all moony over each other for a minute?"

"You're just jealous 'cause she keeps giving you the cold shoulder," Scalphunter said to him, smirking. Lash declined to reply.

"Glad to see you found a little local help of your own," Barry said as he and the other Leaguers clustered around Hal. "After those robots attacked us in the saloon, I was afraid that you'd end up dead before we could find you."

"Not that finding you turned out to be so tough," Kendra chimed in. "It was easy for Scalphunter and I to zero in on that lightshow you were generating."

Hal shrugged, saying, "That wasn't my intention...call it a happy accident. The important thing is that we've found each other, and just in time: between what I can remember now and what my ring's told me, we've got a major problem breathing down our necks." He called up an image of a man in faux military dress from his ring. "This is the Lord of Time, and while none of _us_ have ever faced him before, I get the impression that _he's_ quite familiar with us."

"Okay, you've lost me already," Ralph said.

"He's a time traveler, presumably from somewhere a little further on in our future, and judging by the way he talks, I'd say he's butted heads with us more than once." The image shifted to show all four of the Leaguers collapsed on the ground, with the Lord of Time standing over them. "I also get the impression that he's sick of losing."

"I think...I remember this." Barry was staring hard at the verdant image, his hand unconsciously going up to his throat as he did so. Seconds later, the holographic Time Lord pressed his foot down on the holographic speedster's neck and said, _"I should make you lick my boots for the way you insulted me last time."_

"So he decided to come back to a time _before_ we ran into him and eliminate us? Is that it?" Kendra asked. "Wouldn't changing the timeline that drastically mess things up for himself as well?"

"Maybe he doesn't give a damn 'bout messin' things up." The Leaguers turned to see Jonah standing nearby, gazing at the image projected by the ring with a cold look in his eyes. Lash, Kate, and Scalphunter were standing not far behind him. "Maybe y'all riled him up so bad in the future thet he's willin' tuh take the risk."

"Whatever his reasoning, that's only one part of the problem. We've also got _this_ heading our way." Once again, the image changed, this time showing what appeared to me a meteor passing near Earth. "If left alone, this piece of anti-matter would just float on by and never even come close to us, but the Lord of Time has some scheme to capture it here in the past and transfer it to the future so he can conquer our time. Judging by my own scans, the anti-matter will be in optimal range within a few hours."

"He told us he'd have what he wanted by dawn, then he'd come after the rest of us personally," Barry said, looking up at the night-shrouded sky. "I for one don't want to wait that long."

"Neither do I, but considering how easily he got the drop on us before, we'd better have a good plan in place before we head out to the Grand Canyon." Hal nodded to Scalphunter and Jonah, saying, "We were discussing some things on the way in, and we think we found a blind spot in the Lord of Time's defenses."

"What sort of blind spot?"

"Us," Scalphunter replied. "When your enemy was speaking through that machine-man, he said your friend here was all alone...but by that time, Hex had already been with him for quite a while. Now perhaps your enemy already knew this and was merely taunting you, but the Green Lantern seems to believe that he couldn't see Hex."

"More specifically, I think the Lord of Time is only bothering to watch the four of us." Hal gestured to himself and his teammates in turn. "Think about it for a second: we got tossed at random across Arizona, but he managed to track us all down. He knew _exactly_ where we were, even though none of us stayed in the location we landed in. I don't know if it's the locator beacons in our comlinks or the simple fact that we're anomalies in this time, but he's somehow keeping close tabs on us." He then gestured to their new gun-toting friends. "However, I doubt that he's even giving the local population a second glance."

Ralph tugged at his rubbery bottom lip. "So you're thinking that, while the Lord of Time is focusing all his attention on us, these other guys sneak up and blindside him?"

"Lovely idea, and I'd gladly take part in it," Lash said, "but this fella we're fightin' has us seriously outclassed in the weapons department." He stepped up between Scalphunter and Hex, laying his hands on their shoulders in a gesture of camaraderie. "Now I know you two are good in a fight, but what do y'all plan on doin' if he throws more of those machine-men at us? They're bulletproof."

"Then Ah reckon we ain't gonna use bullets." Jonah shrugged off Lash, then went over to the horse conjured up by the Green Lantern's ring, complete with saddlebags. The bounty hunter yanked one of them open, revealing the remains of the machine-man that had attacked the two of them out in the desert. "Time fer us tuh start fightin' fire with fire."

* * *

The sky over the remote outlook of Tuweep was just beginning to lighten as the Lord of Time's ship fully materialized. It had been sitting cloaked within a pocket of space-time ever since he'd arrived, but the task ahead of him required that he be within the exact same timeframe as his target. Besides, he obviously had no reason to hide anymore: he'd been keeping an eye on the sensors tracking the Justice League, and while all four of them were now together again, their erratic movements suggested to him that they had no clue as to where he was or what he was doing. They'd skirted rather close to the Grand Canyon about a half-hour before, but they'd headed back the way they came long before they even got near Tuweep, and now appeared to be moving in an easterly direction, away from his position. There was a chance that they might wise up now that he was sitting in plain view, but if they did, he still had more than enough ways to take them out of the picture. For now, however, the Lord of Time was content to let them chase their own shadows while he set down to work.

According to his instruments, the chunk of anti-matter was as close to Earth as it would naturally get, so now it was time to give it an unnatural nudge. He fired up a high-intensity tractor beam and locked it onto the anti-matter, tugging it towards the planet -- once it had come far enough down to the surface, he would activate the chrono-stasis generators and draw all that raw power into them. There was the possibility of spillage, of course, so he'd have to make sure his shields were up beforehand...and if the Leaguers were caught unawares and engulfed in an anti-matter backlash, so much the better.

As he monitored the anti-matter's progress, an alarm began to chime: one of the generators he'd placed on the eastern end of the Grand Canyon had suddenly gone offline. The Lord of Time opened a video feed focused on the area to see Elongated Man standing at the lip of the canyon, stretching down to take hold of the four-foot-wide generator as Hawkgirl finished working it loose from the rock. He also caught a glimpse of Flash and Green Lantern moving along the opposite lip of the canyon, obviously on the lookout for more of the devices. "So, you're beginning to catch on," the Lord of Time mused. "I doubt you'll have time to take out all the generators, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to sit idly by while you destroy my work." With the push of a button, he launched a sphere containing a psionic scrambler identical to the one he'd sent after the Justice League in their own time -- it had been quite effective at crippling them before, and considering the damage he'd already inflicted on them with it, a second exposure could very well kill them. A small smile played across his lips as he watched the exterior monitor, seeing the sphere leave the ship and begin climbing into the air....only to suddenly explode before it could activate.

The Lord of Time stared numbly at the screen, unable to comprehend what just occurred. "Must have been a malfunction," he decided, and launched another sphere...which didn't even make it out of the launch tube this time before it was destroyed by what appeared to be a laser blast. "What...what's going on?" he said as a second laser joined the first, burning the ship's hull with such intensity that the material began to melt, sealing the launch tube shut. He looked at his sensors again, trying to figure out which of the Leaguers was attacking him, but they were all still miles away on the eastern end of the canyon. Then another laser blast hit the ship, this time from a different angle -- just a glancing blow, but enough to make the Lord of Time yell in frustration, "_Who's doing this to me?!?_" He cycled through the exterior video feeds until he caught a glimpse of a figure barely visible behind a ridge overlooking his ship -- it was a woman, judging by the hair, training a primitive rifle on his position. He zoomed in on the image until he got a better view of her, and saw that her weapon consisted of a roughly-made wooden stock with a short tube and some other metallic components lashed to it with wire. There were some thin cables attached to it as well, trailing off the weapon and into a leather satchel slung over her shoulder. After a moment, he realized that he was looking at cannibalized parts from one of his own drones!

"You...you..." he started to sputter, his face turning red, then yelled at the screen, "I will _not_ be _mocked_ by such..._primitives_!" His hands flew over the control pad in front of him, activating every drone left in his inventory -- nearly twenty of them -- and instructing them to kill anyone in the vicinity. "I hope you had fun," he said as the robots began to file out of the ship, "because it's the last thing you'll ever do." The Lord of Time sat back in his chair, watching the chaos he'd sown outside: though some had been cut down within moments of leaving the ship, the remaining drones had already flushed out the ones sniping at him. In addition to the woman, there was also an Indian and a man in fancy clothes toting jerry-rigged weapons, all of whom the Lord of Time recognized from the video feed inside the Desecration Saloon -- how desperate the Justice League must have been to enlist _their_ help! He had to concede their bravery, however: even as the gunfighters ran for cover, they continued to take aim at the robots, lessening the number of pursuers they had...but there was no way they could destroy them all. Then he saw that the League was heading towards Tuweep in earnest now, probably alerted by the laser fire. "Makes no difference," the Lord of Time said. "Soon, the anti-matter will be within range of the remaining generators, and then I can just..."

One of the instruments on the control pad began to beep shrilly, and he looked at it in confusion. According to the sensors, someone with an anomalous chronal signature had just entered his ship, which meant that it had to be one of the Leaguers...but he could see them all plainly on the monitors. "Those interlopers must have dealt the ship more damage than I thought," he reasoned as the readings flickered in and out, like the sensors couldn't decide if what it was picking up was real or not. "Either way, I'd best prepare for visitors." Though he preferred not to get physically involved most of the time, he did keep a few handheld weapons onboard. He got up from his seat and went to the control room door, which swished open at his approach...to reveal a scarred cowboy standing just inches in front of him, revolver in hand.

"Howdy," Jonah Hex said, bringing the revolver up and pointing it dead-center at the Lord of Time's face. "Hope yuh weren't plannin' on leavin' just yet, 'cause we've got business to discuss. Namely, y'all shuttin' down these infernal machines of yers an' surrenderin' real peaceful-like."

The Lord of Time could barely hide his anger. Another primitive,and this one actually inside his ship and threatening him with antique weaponry! The _gall_ of him! Fortunately, primitives were always easy to sway, if you knew the right methods. Stepping back as Hex entered the control room proper, the Lord of Time said, "I don't know what those people outside told you, but I am not a threat to you. In fact, if you let me go, I'll make it worth your while. Whatever you want, whatever you can _imagine_. I've got storehouses full of gold, jewels, priceless artifacts...I can give you the power to rule over your fellow man with impunity!" He pointed towards the still-open doorway. "Just follow me down there, you'll see..."

Jonah paused, glanced briefly towards the doorway, then turned back to the Lord of Time and cocked the hammer on his gun, saying, "Mister, y'all ain't got one damn thing in this whole place thet Ah'd even want tuh piss on."

"You...how _dare_ you talk to me like that! Do you _know_ who I am? Do you have any _idea_ what I'm _capable_ of?"

"Course Ah know who yuh are: Yo're an idiot who thinks he's God just 'cause he kin push a button." Hex dipped the gun down and pulled the trigger, driving a bullet into the Lord of Time's left thigh and causing the man to fall to the floor. "An' Ah reckon thet yo're capable of bleedin' tuh death if'n Ah put enough holes in yuh."

An involuntary tremble ran through the Lord of Time as blood pulsed out of the wound in his leg. Over the years, he'd become accustomed to dealing with so-called "superheroes", who each had a strict code of ethics to follow. But this man...this crude, hideous-looking 19th Century barbarian...obviously didn't trouble himself with such restrictions. He flinched as Jonah reached down and grabbed hold of him, pulling him to his feet, then dragged him over to the control pad, saying, "Now, yuh'd better start turnin' off all these gadgets of yers right quick, or else Ah'm gonna even out yer limp. Yuh got thet?"

As the Lord of Time leaned over the controls, his eyes went up to the monitors. Outside, the heroes were nearly done destroying his drones, and were making their way towards the ship, Flash in the lead -- he could be standing in the control room within seconds if he wanted. _I can't let it come to this_, he thought, _not again_. Then another thought occurred to him, and he said to Jonah, "I need to adjust some instruments on the wall over there."

The bounty hunter grabbed him by the collar and walked him over, holding fast as the Lord of Time began flipping switches and turning dials. He tried looking over the man's shoulder to see what he was doing, but none of the symbols on the instruments made any sense to Jonah -- some of it looked like English, but the rest was gibberish. Then a low hum started to emanate from the ceiling, making the hairs on the back of Jonah's neck stand up. "Whut is thet?" he asked. "Yuh'd better tell me, or Ah'll..."

The Lord of Time whirled around, trying to break free of Jonah's grip, but the bounty hunter wasn't about to let go that easy. He struck the Lord of Time repeatedly across the face with the butt of his gun, fighting the urge to just shoot the skunk dead right then and there -- he knew Hal and the others needed this man alive, but they never said anything about undamaged. Then there was a shout from behind them, and someone took hold of Jonah and pulled him off the man. The bounty hunter immediately turned his rage on the newcomer, yelling at Flash, "Never mind me, dammit! _Get him!_"

But it was too late. Bruised and bloody from Hex's assault, the Lord of Time hit a switch on the wall, engulfing himself in shimmering light. Flash ran forward to take hold of him, but the light was already fading away, taking their enemy with it. Green Lantern and Elongated Man began to enter the control room after that, and Barry turned to them, saying, "He's gone. Looks like he had some kind of emergency transporter."

"And here's some worse news," Ralph said as he glanced at the monitors. "The anti-matter's still descending, and without those generators to soak up the energy on impact, it'll blow a decent portion of Arizona -- and all of us -- right off the map."

Barry swore under his breath, then studied the control pad. "If I had a little time, I might be able to figure out these controls and reverse whatever he did." He looked at Hal. "You mind buying me a few minutes?"

"You got it." Hal left an emerald trail in his wake as he flew out of the ship and into the upper atmosphere. Above him, a chunk of anti-matter about as wide as a football field was leaving a trail of its own as it tore through the sky -- it had fallen far enough that, even if Barry managed to shut down the tractor beam, gravity would still drag it the rest of the way down. _Guess we'll have to keep that from happening_, Hal thought, and trained his ring on the anti-matter, trying to stop its forward momentum. He could feel the Lord of Time's tractor beam tugging in the object, but managed to exert enough force of his own to hold it still. _Okay_, _all I have to do now is wait for Barry to do his thing, and we can shove it back into space._ Unfortunately, the thought had barely formed in his mind when Abin Sur's voice came from the ring: _{Warning: Instability detected in anti-matter. Chance of detonation under current conditions: 78.3 percent.}_

"Should've figured," Lantern said under his breath. "All this pushing and pulling is probably tearing it apart." He had no choice, though: if he eased up, the anti-matter would start falling to Earth once more. "Hurry up, Barry," he said, watching as dark cracks began to form on the glowing rock before him.

_{Chance of detonation now at 83.551 percent. Power levels at 34.4 percent.}_

"I know, ring...now _shut up!_" He focused his mind on the task at hand, blocking out thoughts of what would happen if the anti-matter exploded in his face. After what felt like an eternity, the tug of the tractor beam disappeared, and the anti-matter began to move upward slowly. Breathing a sigh of relief, Hal increased his ring's influence on the object as he tried to push it back into space -- moments later, the tractor beam returned, this time aiding Hal's efforts instead of hindering. "Okay, looks like we're gonna make it," he started to say, then saw one of the dark cracks suddenly split open, and the ring chimed, _{Warning: Detonation imminent. Please recede to a safe distance.}_

"Is the anti-matter far enough away from the planet?"

A pause -- too long of one, in Hal's opinion -- and the ring came back with, _{At current rate of speed, anti-matter will be at an acceptable distance in 8.5 seconds. Detonation is predicted to occur in 7.9 seconds.}_

"Pedal to the metal, then." He poured everything he had left into pushing the anti-matter as fast as he could, all the while moving himself away from it. Seconds later, it exploded, and Green Lantern's ring instantly wrapped him in an emerald cocoon to protect him from the blast. Even so, he could feel the force of it buffeting him around the upper atmosphere. When it finally passed, he scanned the planet for any lingering effects, and breathed a sigh of relief when he found none. "Nothing like a close call to get your blood pumping," Hal said, gazing down upon the Earth far beneath his feet. Dawn had not yet come to the entire West Coast, the stark dividing line between day and night currently falling across Nevada. Out of habit, his eyes traveled up the Pacific coastline, searching for a specific pattern of lights that didn't exist yet -- he was sure that there was a Coast City in 1878, but without all those lights that he was accustomed to seeing, it was difficult to discern its location with the naked eye. Still, he had to admit that this was a rather unique opportunity, to be able to see the world in such an innocent state, unadorned by satellites or electricity. The people down there had no idea of the wonders to come in the next century, nor could they conceive of some of the horrors that would also occur in that time. Then again, there were probably many things they considered commonplace that Hal was completely ignorant of. That was the problem with progress: in order to gain some things, you had to lose others, until the old ways became just as strange and incomprehensible as the new ways had once been.

"Same planet, different worlds," Hal said to himself, then plunged back into Earth's atmosphere like a falling star.

* * *

The sun had fully risen by the time they'd collected up every stray piece of the Lord of Time's equipment. After the near-disaster that had been averted, the Leaguers wanted to make sure no more possible damage to the timestream could be done by an overlooked scrap of future tech. Of course, there was still the dilemma of the four local witnesses to it all. "There's no way we can keep you to your word," Flash said to them as both groups stood outside the Lord of Time's ship, "but we will ask that you don't tell anyone about what happened here, just the same."

"I think we can all agree to that," Scalphunter said. Hex gave a silent nod.

"Nobody'd ever believe us, anyways," Bat Lash added. "Heck, I was there, and I hardly believe it myself."

"All the more reason not to talk. People would think we were crazy, tellin' them about machine-men and such." Kate smiled. "Gotta admit, though, I admire the lot of you. Anybody that can deal with bizarre things like this without battin' an eye has got to have a lot of sand."

Elongated Man smiled back at Kate, saying, "Thanks...I think." He then waved towards the ship with an exaggerated sweep of his hand. "Well, I hate to sound like I'm in a rush, but I can't wait to get home and tell Sue all about this little adventure."

The others agreed as well that it was time to go, and the Leaguers said their good-byes before filing up into the ship. As Hal began to walk towards the gangplank, however, Jonah reached out and took hold of his arm, saying, "Hold up a minute, son."

Green Lantern looked at Jonah expectantly. The bounty hunter had been rather quiet ever since the Lord of Time escaped, and Hal attributed it to the man being angry with himself over letting that happen. But now, as Hal waited for him to speak his piece, he saw a strange look on Jonah's face, as if the man wanted to say something terribly important but couldn't find the words. Then the look passed away, to be replaced with the same unreadable expression that he always wore, and Hex merely said, "Hell of a day, wasn't it?"

Hal let out a quick chuckle of surprise. "Yeah, I suppose that's one way of putting it. Thanks again, by the way, for saving my life out there in the desert."

"Ah reckon yuh would've done the same, had it been the other way around." Jonah shifted his grip to shake Hal's hand. "Take care of yerself, Lantern."

"You do the same, Hex." Hal continued on his way, the ship closing up as soon as he was inside. His fellow Justice Leaguers were already in the control room, and Ralph stretched his neck over to the Lantern when he came through the doorway. "What's so funny?" Hal asked when he saw the grin on the rubber-man's face.

"I've been dying to ask you for hours: Is that Hex guy Two-Face's great-great-grandfather, or is that ugly mug of his sheer coincidence?"

"You don't have a lot of room to talk," Kendra said to Ralph. "You spent a good part of the day playing Lone Ranger with your own personal Tonto. Probably a dream come true for you."

"So I got picked up by an Indian, so what? At least he doesn't look all freaky like Hal's new buddy does." Ralph pinched his right cheek and yanked, making his eye bulge out a bit and his back teeth show. "Plus somebody forgot to tell that guy the Civil War's been over with for about a decade, and his side lost."

"I'll admit, Jonah's got some...image problems," Hal said, "and his social skills need some work, but if you spent some time with him like I did, you'd see he's not all bad. Just don't piss him off, though, because he's got a mean streak about a mile wide."

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

"Let's just say we had a little discussion about the use of excessive force." Hal stepped over to where Barry stood at the main console, the speedster moving his hands over the controls so fast that they became a red blur. "Can you understand all that data?" Hal asked him, watching the stats fly by on the screen.

"Just enough to backtrack the ship's flight path through time. We'll have no problem getting home, but we should call in Ray Palmer later on to give this stuff a more in-depth look." A slight thrum could be felt throughout the ship as it began to move into the timestream once more. "Matter of fact, I think we should call the entire Justice League together as soon as possible, just to keep everyone abreast of what's to come."

"What do you mean?" Hawkgirl asked. "Are you planning some sort of big time-trip with your new toy already?"

"Far from it." Flash turned to look at his friends. "The Lord of Time said that he'd fought us before, possibly on more than one occasion...which means we've got quite a few more battles with him waiting for us on the horizon. And since he can jump across the centuries and pull resources from wherever and whenever he feels like, I have a feeling that those battles aren't going to be easy."

**EPILOGUE**

The four of them watched the ship fade away, the sound of it passing into the timestream lingering on for a few seconds afterward. Once all traces of it were gone, they began to walk back to where they'd hidden their horses. All of them had agreed that heading back to Desecration was probably a bad idea: there was the possibility that the townsfolk might be a little upset with them over the ruckus they'd caused earlier, not to mention the awkward questions that might come up regarding said ruckus, so better to avoid all that nonsense by steering clear of the place entirely. As they walked, Lash brought up to Scalphunter the matter of all his luggage still being in Tucson, and the gambler was trying to talk the Kiowa warrior into compensating him for the train fare it would cost him to go retrieve it, seeing as how it was -- in a way -- Scalphunter's fault. So far, Lash wasn't making any progress on that front.

Kate paid little attention to their conversation, being lost in her own thoughts. Her mind kept circling around the instant sense of familiarity she'd had with Hawkgirl -- Kendra, as she'd heard the other future-folk call her -- and wondered why that was so. She figured it may have been due to the simple fact that, like Kate, she was a woman that dared to play by a man's rules, but the longer she thought about it, the more she believed it to be more than that. Could it be that Kendra was somehow a distant relation of hers, descended from children Kate hadn't even conceived yet? It was certainly a possibility, she supposed. To be sure, it was a strange notion, especially for Kate: she had never been one for thinking about the future, having spent the majority of her life dwelling on a single event from her past, and rectifying it no matter what the cost. Jonah had once told her that sort of narrow focus would do her more harm than good in the long run, but it was a hard habit to break after thirteen years. Besides, he...

Kate stopped walking and looked around. Where _was_ Jonah? He'd been right behind her when they'd left the plateau. Then she spotted him a ways back, standing with his shoulders slumped and facing the barren plain that was Tuweep. She walked back to his side and laid a hand on his shoulder, saying, "Jonah? Are you okay?"

The bounty hunter didn't answer at first, his eyes appearing to be fixed on a point on the horizon, though there was nothing there of note that Kate could see save the rising sun. Then, without looking at her, he said quietly, "Right as rain."

"You sure? 'Cause you're acting the way you did when you told me about that girl...what was her name again? Stella?"

A long pause, then Jonah turned around. He glanced over to the receding forms of Scalphunter and Lash for a moment before looking at her directly. "Yuh want tuh know a secret, sugar?" he asked. Before she could answer, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Ah've had an interestin' life."

Kate didn't know what he meant by that, but she could see a hint of a smile on his face as he straightened up. Whatever was troubling him had apparently passed away, and she decided not to press him about it. Without a word, Hex slipped an arm around Kate's waist, and together, they walked away from Tuweep, the bright morning sun throwing long shadows before them.

**THE END**


End file.
